Fixing the little things

I have finally come to that part of the rebuild process where I have dealt with all the big stuff – the engine and the windows and the larger leaks – and can focus on fixing the little things.

The Switch Panel

I had already spent some time already tracing mysterious electric lines around the interior, stripping out the unused ones and labelling the useful ones. One of the tasks that I kept putting off was to decipher the switch panel, because behind it was just a huge ball of loose wires. It was impossible to get my hand in to unthread them, because all the earth leads had been wired into a single brass block that lived in the middle of the snarl.

One sunny day, I arrived with my soldering iron, some reels of wire, and a lot of patience, and began to unravel.

The reason for the snarl was that, although generally the wiring on the boat is sound, it had had decades of additions and changes, every one of which had all been led back to the same switch panel (and especially to the same earth block).

I slowly traced all the wires, and labelled each one, and excised excess cable and replaced it where it was a bit short. I made up a wooden board with more earth blocks than I will ever need, so that each earth wire is separate from the others and easy to distinguish.

Cheval’s Eyes

Cheval has these lovely old chromed navigation lights on either side of the bow. The lenses are faded, the starboard one is smashed, and neither of them are connected to the electrics, having been replaced by a modern unit on the pulpit.

Nevertheless, I rather like them, so one day I took them off and had a think about how I could make them look a bit better (and less leaky).

My first task was to fix the starboard lens, which was broken. I had some Pinkysil silicone left over from another project, so I made a mould of the inside of the port lens. Then I strapped the broken lens into the mould, and filled the whole thing up with F-190 polyurethane.

Of course, the starboard lens was now solid instead of being a transparent shell, but this was fine because I wasn’t going to use them as navigation lights. In any event, the lenses were so degraded from decades of sun that they had barely any colour.

I popped out the repaired shell, and – after quite a bit of experimentation to find something that would stick to both acrylic and polyurethane – discovered some spray paints that gave a bright finish, and gave them a few coats.

Leaky Lazarette

The locker hatches in the cockpit will, naturally, allow rainwater to seep in along the hinge line and down the edges. There are supposed to be drainage channels to catch it and shed it into the cockpit sole, but some of them had rotted completely away, allowing rainwater to drain into the bilges underneath the engine. This would have been part of the problem that caused my oil leak.

Some new wood, a lot of elbow-grease, some industrial glue, and some left-over window sealant saved the day.

We went away for 7 weeks and came back, and the bilges were bone-dry.

Keeping it Tidy

I bought some No-Wear chafe guards to protect my new paintwork. They are flexible stainless steel with a strong adhesive backing, so you can mould them to the shape of your boat. Handy if you don’t have hard gunwales, and your boat is made from soft plastic.

I added some rope bags and a solar-powered extractor fan…

The final touches of deck paint

I’ve been slowly moving around the deck, checking fittings and filling holes, applying two-pack undercoat, and finally finishing off with either Kiwi-Grip textured non-slip deck paint, or Norglass Weatherfast gloss enamel. It looks OK, I think.

She just needs some soft furnishings, a bigger solar panel, and dinghy davits. She’s almost good to go!

Hiking the Three Capes Track – Day Four

Each cabin complex on the Three Capes Track has an identical dorm setup, so every night I was sharing with the same people in a carbon-copy of the same dorm cabin. As usual, I had claimed the bunk that nobody else wanted, in the darkest corner farthest from the door, which I crawled into like a yacht’s berth. This gave me my own corner of darkness while the rest of the guys were bumbling around with their bright head torches.

I am sure that head torches are wonderfully useful for those who choose not to let their eyes become accustomed to the dark, but I find them annoying in company because humans are always moving their heads, looking around, momentarily distracted by any noise or motion, and shining their lights into the eyes of anybody they want to talk to. At least with a small pencil torch, it remains focussed on the task in hand, and doesn’t bother anyone else.

I woke as usual six hours after going to sleep, in this case at one in the morning. Rather than get up, I just lay and listened to the wind hammering past outside. The forecast was for a blustery day with 50km/h gusts, and it certainly sounded like it as the occasional flurry of rain pattered on the tin roof.

By seven, I was up and about and making Aeropress coffee. What a fine device this is; lightweight, neat, unbreakable, and capable of quickly extracting every last millilitre of caffeine from a few spoonfuls of grounds. The second-most common comment on my travel kit this week has been, “Oh I wish I’d brought my Aeropress too” (the most common comment was, “Oh I wish I’d brought wine and rum too…”)

The fourth day of the Three Capes Track is acknowledged to be ‘the hard day’. Not only does it begin with the climb to the top of Mount Fortescue, a vertical rise of just under 250 metres, but it also has the psychological stressor of a scheduled bus waiting at the end of the walk to take us back to Port Arthur. We had booked on the later of the two buses, but nevertheless, the timetable was a niggle at the back of the mind.

There was rain in the cold and blustery air. We donned our waterproofs and set off. The showery weather matched well with the ecology of this side of the mountain, which tended to drippy rainforest and ferns and moss.

The climb wasn’t as bad as advertised, although there were a lot of steps and it got a bit tiring. However, there were many mosses and ferns to look at, and when we finally got to the top, good although misty views back to yesterday’s Cape Pillar.

The rain forest environment was quite different from the Banksia and She-Oak ecology that we had experienced on Cape Pillar. There were no Spring flowers here in the gloom, but instead an abundance of ferns and mosses.

We followed the path across the top of Mount Fortescue, and then steps leading down the other side. Abruptly, we emerged from the rain forest into young stands of Sassafras trees

From here, we quickly dropped to a cliff-side path with the more familiar impenetrable jungle of bush plants, scattered with Spring flowers.

The rain had died off, but now the wind picked up. It got pretty blustery out on the exposed rocky outcrops.

Most of the Three Capes Track is private, in the sense that Parks & Wildlife only allow ticketed groups of 50 trekkers at a time, one group per cabin. The only faces that we have seen for the past three days have been familiar from our time on the trail and in the communal areas of the cabins.

The ranger at Retakunna had explicitly warned us that, near the end of Day Four, the Three Capes Track joins the public track to Cape Hauy. He mentioned that many people like to leave their packs at the junction and pick them up on their return, but pointed out that we should be mindful that – if left – they wouldn’t be as secure as we had gotten used to, because there would be other people about. In fact, when we reached the junction and encountered our first group of day-walkers, it was quite a shock to see the first face “not from our village”.

Most people left their packs anyway, wrapped in plastic to confound the currawongs, which apparently are prone to figure out zips and buckles in their quest for food. I carried mine anyway, for the same reasons as yesterday.

The wind was still gusting, but the weather was warm. The track to Cape Hauy is beautifully constructed of local stone, mainly in the form of steps. It was very pretty, but daunting to find that, whenever you turned a corner, there was more track stretching away to the horizon.

We followed the path until it wound its way to the summit of Cape Hauy. Buffeted by the wind, we stood and admired the dolerite stacks, the views, and some passing whales. Since Cape Hauy is a public area, there is a little guard rail around the top, something that has been deliberately omitted from the controlled parts of the Three Capes Track. Leaning on the rail, facing the mass known as the Candlestick, you can look down on the Totem Pole, popular with climbers.

The ascent of Cape Hauy really marks the end of the Three Capes Track experience. From here, it is but a gentle return to sea level at Fortescue Bay.

It had been a pleasant experience. Hardly a trek, more of a gently curated four-day amble through the bush. Parks & Wildlife have struck a careful line between tourist attraction and introductory hiking experience, with plenty of interesting tales without dumbing anything down. The paths and boardwalks are a necessary evil which insulate you and hold you aloof from the nature all around, but this is to some extent offset by the deliberate lack of signs, fences and guard rails away from the trail, which would otherwise detract from the wide sweeping vistas. The feeling of being part of a small nomadic village was a pleasant surprise, and enhanced the notion of being away from the stresses of civilisation.

Even though we’d booked ourselves onto the late bus, we made it back to the Bay in time to catch the earlier one, but unfortunately that vehicle had been run off the road by a logging truck. Nobody was hurt, but the bus was now bogged in the roadside verge and couldn’t be moved. Pennicott Adventures did a great job of prioritising the walkers who needed to catch onward services, and used spare buses to ferry us all back to Port Arthur, tired but in good spirits.

Hiking the Three Capes Track – Day Three

I slept well on the second night of the Three Capes Track. I woke naturally at one in the morning, feeling refreshed, and went out for a little walk. Brush-tailed possums stared at me as I pottered about in their night-time territory. An incredibly bright star shone through the cloud layer. I wondered what it was, but it didn’t feel right to get out my phone and launch the star map, so I simply accepted its beauty and walked on.

Eventually I returned to bed, woke at dawn to light rain, and used the ingenious camp shower that I had noticed yesterday. I met Elizabeth in the kitchen and we brewed an Aeropress coffee, followed by fresh fried eggs over reconstituted Mexican beans.

One of the popular features of the third day of the Three Capes Track is that, because it is a there-and-back trip, you can store your pack in a dedicated hut and walk without it. I thought about it for a while, but in the end decided that I was perfectly happy with my pack, which was only a little over 20kg and had everything in it that I needed. I had carefully chosen its contents and I knew how to get to them instantly, so it seemed silly to try to strip it down any more. Just to show willing, I parked my sleeping bag and spare water bottle in the hut, and took everything else.

Day Three takes you out to on the narrow peninsular leading to Cape Pillar, tending to impenetrable Banksia bush on squishy mud. Reg and Tim, the locally famous bush-bashers who had spent several years breaking this trail, had found it very hard going. The ubiquitous boardwalk made it all rather easy for us.

The route is necessarily linear and windswept, and probably a bit miserable when the weather comes in, but today it was bright if overcast, and perfect for walking.

Once the path reached the Southern coastline of the Cape, it began to get rather spectacular, tending to dolomite columns and crumbling stacks.

Tasman Island hove into view, complete with lighthouse. There are harrowing stories about the difficulties of getting families and supplies up the sheer cliffs in the basket of a flying fox, before the light was automated.

Almost at the end of the path, there is a short side-climb up onto The Blade, with marvellous views all around.

And now, the final short stretch to the end of the Cape Pillar Track and the Southernmost point of the Three Capes Track. But just because we were walking through dense Banksia on the thin end of a crumbling rocky peninsula, didn’t mean that there weren’t any more flowers.

But all good things come to an end, and our path ended here, on the cliffs above Cape Pillar.

We ate lunch on one of the stacks overlooking the sea (rice and fish again, it seems to work well), and headed back the way we had come, re-climbing The Blade on the way back (because why not?)

Day 3 was to give us one last surprise. The gentle boardwalk that we remembered lolloping effortlessly down this morning, turned out to be a long, long slope back up to Hurricane Heath, inflexibly hard stretches of boardwalk punctuated by little steps. My hip began to complain loudly for the first time today, and I sneaked some extra pain killers about half way up.

Passing Munro cabin, where we had awoken that morning, we picked up our stuff from the luggage hut, and continued on our way to Retakunna cabin, where the amenities were every bit as delightful as at Surveyors and Munro.

It got a bit cold later on, but we lit the pellet fire to warm the kitchen, then sat and drank coffee laced with rum as the rain came in over the scrubby mountain gums outside.

Hiking the Three Capes Track – Day Two

At the first hut of the Three Capes Track, I had a comfortable night’s rest and woke before dawn. I quietly left the cabin and limped out along the wooden boardwalk to the toilet block, which features beautifully clean dry toilets, the waste dropping into Apollo-shaped pods which are taken away by helicopter.

There was a warm desert wind blowing from the North. My hip was sore from an earlier injury but the painkillers were kicking in, so I did some gentle stretches in the pre-dawn light, and then made my way up to the helipad, which is a simple square of clean gravel at the edge of the compound, to watch the sunrise.

As the first rays of orange moved across the sky, a handful of other people slowly drifted out to stand quietly and widely separated on the pad. Each in our separate bubble of contemplation, we quietly watched the dawn of our first day on the trail. As the sun finally lifted clear of the horizon, the wind changed and brought with it a flurry of rain. Exchanging small private smiles, we sauntered slowly back to the cabins. Time for breakfast.

Elizabeth and I both like to enjoy our first meal of the day, so we had packed half a dozen fresh eggs each as a little luxury. Mine were in their cardboard carton, and one had broken, but it remained salvageable. We scrambled four eggs in ghee with cracked rice in one of the kitchen pans, served with fresh coffee from my Aeropress. Not bad at all.

We washed up, composted the shells, and packed everything else away. The weather outside had turned cool and blustery. We hoisted our packs, and set off.

The second day starts with the ascent of a double peak (Arthurs Peak / Crescent Mountain) connected by a low saddle. I was curious to see how my duff leg was going to cope. It’s only a 200m climb and the path is manicured into stone steps, but I was still a little puffed at the top of the first one. The painkillers and back brace were great, but presumably the tendon was still taking its toll inside.

To take my mind off that, Spring flowers were blooming everywhere, especially the Erect Guineaflower and the local subspecies of Hairy Boronia which is endemic to this peninsula.

Across the saddle to Crescent Mountain, the climb rewarded us with lovely views across the aptly named Crescent Bay, and beyond to Cape Raoul. It is a curiosity of the “Three Capes” Track that it actually follows the perimeter of just two capes, Pillar and Hauy. The third, Raoul, is only ever glimpsed in the distance.

We stopped to admire the view, and then began the climb back down, following a beautifully constructed staircase of local stone.

From the twin peaks, we descended into a flower-laden valley, where yellow-tailed cockatoos feasted on the ubiquitous banksias. The boardwalk made it easy for us, but the first walkers to break trail here spent several years forcing their way through impenetrable Banksia and She-Oak. Much of the work was done by a colourful couple called Reg and Tim, who named many of the features along the way, including ‘Where-the-freaking-hell-are-we Ridge’, which gave this basin its current name, Ellarwey Valley.

Much of the Three Capes Track is now protected by wooden walkways, and these do a great job of keeping everybody to the path and preventing erosion bogs, with the bonus of lifting you a little above the landscape so that you can see over the top of the scrub, but they are tediously hard and flat underfoot.

Today, the valley was beautiful and the Spring flowers delightful, but it was very exposed, and easy to imagine that it would be a harsh trudge if the weather was coming from the Southern Ocean.

At the far end of the basin, we ascended Tornado Ridge where a short side-path led to a series of delightful benches overlooking Tornado Bay. Here we paused and put together a hearty lunch of pre-cooked rice and tinned fish.

Back on the main path, we followed the path alongside the plunging cliffs. A squall came in across Tornado Bay which had us scurrying for our waterproofs, but it swiftly passed by to one side.

The flora varied between wet and dry sclerophyll, but was still sprinkled with Spring blooms. The ground underfoot would have been boggy without the boardwalk. However, the wire-covered hard wooden surface had taken its toll on my boots, and I had to do a swift repair job. Thank goodness for cloth tape.

Arriving at the Munro cabin, we found that it was all pleasantly familiar. Several beautifully appointed fire-resistant buildings holding a variety of kitchens and dormitories. The marked difference was the availability of a hot shower located in the bush. Fill a bucket with hot water from a nearby gas boiler, pour the bucket into the shower bag, hoist it to the sky, and stand beneath! Lovely.

Where Surveyors has a deck for admiring sunsets over Cape Raoul, Munro has a viewing platform, complete with telescope, out over the whale migration route. Humpback whales hung out below for much of the afternoon and then, as dusk fell, a pod of dolphins came inshore to feed in the surf. Wedge-tailed eagles soared overhead.

Tonight’s dinner was reconstituted camp fare, but palatable enough: “Roast lamb and vegetables and mash” followed by rolls of sour cherry paste, with a glass of hot rum tea.

We should have carried more wine, really. The official recommendation was to carry three litres each of water per day, but I had barely touched mine, there would have been room for an extra litre of red instead. One of the other walkers had packed the silvered bag from the inside of a wine box, and had a little party sitting up on the helicopter pad with legs dangling toward the ocean, watching the whales.

Hiking the Three Capes Track – Day One

I have always wanted to walk the Three Capes Track, a four-day hike around the Tasman Peninsula in Tasmania, but it is very popular and tickets are restricted and I never seemed to find the time to sort it out. I was delighted, then, to hear from my good friend Elizabeth that she was flying in the next month to do the trek, and that one of her party had cancelled. I instantly snaffled the spare ticket.

One week before the walk, I was cutting firewood up in my forest when I twisted awkwardly and hurt my leg. For a couple of days it was middling sore, and then it got so bad that I couldn’t sit or lie down, let alone walk. I went for remedial massage at my favourite Chinese doctor, and she did her best but shook her head and told me that I had torn one of the tendons in my hip. She gave me some lovely pain-relief patches which stopped the pain but didn’t help me to walk, and recommended that I buy a back-brace.

Our tickets were for Monday, and it was now Thursday. Off-the-shelf medication was having no effect, although the back-brace allowed me to stand unaided. I had ransacked my medicine cabinets for spare opiates, but none of them touched the incapacitating pain, so I begged my GP to give him something that would allow me to walk. He equipped me with Meloxicam for inflammation and Pregabalin for neuropathic pain. The published side effects were a motley selection, among them “unable to think”, “make bad decisions”, and – my favourite – “hold incorrect beliefs in the face of evidence”. Hiking in the wilderness for four days, what could possible go wrong?

Pregabalin needs a bit of tuning to each individual, so I upped the dose until I could make it through the day. My brain certainly felt a bit soupy, and I had trouble with simple arithmetic. My family told me that I was responding slowly but seemed happier than usual.

By Saturday, I could reliably walk a few tens of metres, so in the evening I strapped on an empty backpack over my back-brace and experimentally walked up and down the street. It was only moderately painful, so I jumped over a small creek. I didn’t fall or cry out. I had 48 kilometres to do next week. I recorded in my diary, “Only two more sleeps. I can do this!”

On Sunday, Elizabeth came to stay, and on Monday we drove over to the Port Arthur Heritage Centre to check in for the walk. Officially we had also purchased tickets for the Heritage Site itself, but there wasn’t really time to do anything about it, so we grabbed a bite to eat instead and joined the other twenty-odd hikers on the sea dock.

Tasmania Parks and Wildlife have joined forces with Pennicott Wilderness Journeys to provide a boat service across the bay to the Tasman Peninsula. I’ve taken Pennicott Wilderness boats several times, and they are always good. My favourite is the Bruny Island cruise, but even though the Three Capes boat is nominally a ferry service, this one didn’t disappoint either.

The actual route across the bay is variable and weather-dependent (or, to be more accurate, swell-dependent, due to the big rollers that typically come in from the Southern Ocean). On our trip, the sea was uncharacteristically smooth, and so we enjoyed a jaunt to see colonies of cormorants and long-nosed fur seals, before arriving at the shelving beach of Denman’s Cove.

The Three Capes Track begins with a sandy wade to shore from the landing-craft style ramp at the bow of the ferry.

The track began between two large rocks at the edge of the beach, with a wooden sculpture. Almost immediately, we found ourselves sharing the path with a small but determined echidna, which wobble alongside us completely unperturbed until distracted by a nice rotten log full of ants.

There were spring flowers everywhere, and we dawdled a bit to admire them, and a selection of views across the water to Port Arthur as the path slowly climbed up toward the cluster of cabins known as ‘Surveyors’.

There were two tempting beaches along the way, not only Denman’s Cove but also Surveyor’s Cove. We knew that we would not be back down at sea level for several days, and it would have been fun to stay and frolic awhile. The water was warm, the sun was strong, and there was very little wind, but the idea of getting to our first stop, the Surveyors Cabin, was equally appealing.

We really hadn’t known what to expect, since the word ‘cabin’ can cover a multitude of sins, but these were spectacular. Spotlessly clean with well-organised bunks, well-equipped camp kitchens, and plenty of space outside to sprawl and admire the sun setting behind the spires of Cape Raoul.

Each cabin is overseen by an on-site warden, who stays in a cabin of their own on the edge of the site. It sounds like an ideal job; they pack in all their supplies, stay for a few days greeting walking parties and cleaning up after them, hike out for a long weekend, then pack in to the next cabin in the cycle.

The ticketing system ensures that there are never more than 48 walkers in one place at one time, which sounds like a lot of people, but in fact it all felt spacious and uncrowded, and it was always possible to find space to put a kettle on or to find somewhere comfortable to sit.

Since the first day was so short and we didn’t have to worry too much about spoilage, Elizabeth and I had elected to bring a one-off meal of steak and wine, and so dined that night in some style. Since we were packing all our food in and rubbish out, the rest of our inventory was freeze-dried to save weight. We ate and chatted, washed up, put the organics in a compost bin, and carefully rolled up the rest of the waste into freezer bags.

There was a well-stocked library and a supply of games, but as dusk fell, most of us drifted off to bed.

My bunk room was calm, dark, and comfortable. There were larger and smaller rooms, and the beds had been allocated according to the demographic of the group. I was sharing with a single man and a father and son; Elizabeth with the ladies and children in the group that she had booked with.

Each bunk was equipped with a foam sleeping pad, and we had all been advised to bring a sleeping bag and ear plugs (as defence against snorers), and to roll up some spare clothes as a pillow.

Tomorrow we would be heading into the thick bush of Cape Pillar. But for now, some rest.

The Little Pump that Didn’t

While backing the yacht out of her berth the other weekend, the engine overheated. It had already done this once recently, and on that occasion had filled the bilge with oil. I had since carefully (and expensively) replaced all of the metal oil pipes in case of invisible pinholes, and since then the engine had been behaving itself, so it was disconcerting to hear the alarm shrieking again. This time, before we killed the motor, I peeked over the stern to check the exhaust, and sure enough it was running dry. There was something amiss with the raw water cooling pump.

With the engine cover removed, I could see that the cover to the pump’s impeller housing was now streaked with green, which it hadn’t been before. Clearly it was now leaking sea water, but it is well known on the Yanmar 1GM10 that a leaky pump cover can drip subtly and almost invisibly onto one of the oil lines, causing it to rust.

Perhaps this was the ultimate cause of my assumed pinhole leak? Perhaps, but a slight water drip didn’t explain my current problem. I removed the cover, expecting to find the impeller broken up into chunks, but it was still in place and in reasonably good shape. Curious.

I unfastened the clamp holding the flexible sea water inlet pipe and pulled it off the pump, forgetting that I had not first closed the through-hull. There was a violent spray of sea water which only stopped after I reached behind the engine and smacked the stopcock lever with a rubber mallet. Shaking the water out of my hair and rolling my eyes at my carelessness, I returned to the task at hand.

With the hoses disconnected, it was time to remove the pump, but this was easier said than done. Perhaps due to long-term microscopic leakage, but certainly at least in part due to long-term neglect, all three of the pump’s mounting bolts were rusty and rounded. There was nothing for a spanner to grip.

I was contemplating the traditional solutions (welding a rod to the rusty bolt head, chiselling a groove to provide purchase for an impact driver), when on the internet I discovered “bolt extractor sockets”. What a marvellous invention. They’re like a regular socket, but instead of a hex shape inside, they contain angled blades. The idea is that you hammer them onto the rounded nut or bolt so that they cut their way on and hold tight, at which point you simply undo them with a regular socket handle.

I bought a set at Repco. The kit looked solid, but the concept sounded far too easy to be true. I was wrong; the first bolt came off like a dream. After a little fiddling, so did the second one.

There is an immutable rule of mechanics, that – regardless of where you choose to start or what you are working on – it is always the final fastener that causes the most trouble. The third pump bolt was no different. I hammered home the extractor socket just fine, but the third bolt sits partially obscured by the crankshaft pulley, and my socket wrench is just a little too fat to fit between the pulley and the bolt head.

I really really didn’t want to remove the crankshaft pulley. In that direction lies madness. Instead, I went to Nubco and purchased a beautiful little socket wrench with a low profile and short handle, built especially for those awkward tight corners. Back on the boat, it slipped perfectly under the pulley, and in a jiffy out came the water pump.

I could clearly see the moving parts inside, and frankly it didn’t look too bad. I needed to deal with the leak, but the rest looked OK. Still, there was a problem with the pump, so I went ahead and disassembled it. Most of the guts came out easily, but I had to pry and chisel the oil and water seals, and they would never work again. Nevertheless, they had looked fine before I mangled them.

I asked the lovely people at Spectrum Engineering for Yanmar’s full rebuild kit. They didn’t have one, but they carefully examined my disassembled parts, gave me back the ones that they judged unharmed, and replaced the bearings and seals from their shelves. The lady asked if I wanted a gasket for the impeller cover. I said, “what gasket?” because my pump hadn’t had one. No wonder it was leaking.

After scrubbing the old parts clean with toilet gel, vinegar, and bicarb, the rebuild was pretty simple, apart from a rookie mistake when I was drifting in the new bearing seal with the back of a socket but unaccountably got it wedged at a slight angle. Back to Spectrum to get another replacement, and then the job was done.

I’d decided to replace the seawater hoses that feed the pump, because they had seemed a bit crispy to the touch when I pulled them off. My local Repco supplied a Z-hose which I could cut into lengths including the tricky moulded curves.

Back at the boat, I laid down a puppy-training pad under the engine (marvellous for soaking up spillage, and much cheaper than posh chandlery pads) and pulled off the old seawater hoses. The stopcock was of course still closed, but residual water spilled out as I got to work replacing them, using new stainless hose clips.

Once both pump and pipes were installed, I folded up the saturated puppy-training pad, dropped it in the bin, started the bilge pump to clear the overspill, and watched the shells tumble along in the lowest bilge. Shells?

I stopped the bilge pump, and had a closer look. There was a handful of tiny mussel shells rattling around, which must have been ejected from the inlet hose when I accidentally flushed it over my head.

What the heck were shells doing in the intake hose? I remembered reaching behind the engine and whacking the stopcock lever with the mallet. There had been plenty of room to swing the hammer. I got out the Dolphin torch and peered over the engine block and into the gloom under the cockpit sole. I could clearly see the inlet hose, leading directly from the stopcock to the pump inlet; no filter, no basket, just raw seawater and whatever happened to be floating in it.

I can only imagine that the shells have been tumbling inside the hose, occasionally falling across the intake and blocking it, falling temporarily free when the engine and pump stops, ready to pop up and block the hose by random chance when the pump re-starts. I don’t want to imagine how many other shells have been crushed to fragments by the impeller and sent to circulate through the engine.

I bought and fitted a strainer, fired up the engine, and sat happily on the dock watching the salt water being pumped back into the sea.

Eye Splice

Before we bought her, our pocket cruiser Cheval de Mer had been in the same berth for some 20 years, through two previous live-aboard owners. For most of that time, she has sat with her bow facing into the dock on six permanently spliced mooring lines, which had been specifically created to hold her in position with easy access to a ladder up onto the dock along the starboard side.

We have no protective toe rails on Cheval de Mer, and the mooring lines had been rubbing in the same places for so long, that they had chafed right through the gel coat on the gunwale to the glass fibres beneath. I’ve sealed the worn holes with West System resin, and preventing further damage is on the to-do list.

I had been checking the dockside fittings now and again, and had already doubled-up on two of the lines because they were looking a bit old. Then one winter’s night there was a wind event recorded as 120km/h, so I dropped by the marina next morning to check that all was well. There’s a short mooring line that is used to keep her close to the ladder, but the land-side connection isn’t really visible as it is hidden under the dock. That morning I found the mooring line floating free, with the rope eye and metal thimble worn completely through.

Clearly, I was overdue to replace all the lines, but the reason that I hadn’t done it properly yet was that I didn’t want to just replace them ‘as is’. My preference is to be able to pop out for a single-handed sail now and again, and so far I haven’t done that on Cheval de Mer because of the difficulty of reversing out of the tight corner in which she is berthed, an action that really needs two people, one to steer and the other to fend-off. I wanted to make up new lines which would allow us to berth her stern-to, giving me the opportunity to simply motor out of the berth whenever I wanted to. In case you’re wondering, berthing in reverse will be much simpler than departing in reverse, due to the configuration of the pontoons and available hand-holds.

We waited for our chance when the wind was low and the tide was slack, so that we could turn her around in her berth while hastily fabricating temporary lines. I had an idea in my head that we would push her out and turn her around by hand, but Bronwyn pooh-poohed that plan and said that she’d simply motor out to sea, turn around, and come back in. Since somebody needed to be on the foredeck to fend off, and somebody else needed to be on shore to work the lines, we borrowed the services of our friend Peter, and thank goodness that we did.

We arrived as planned on a wind-free afternoon at the slack of high tide and started the motor, an old but serviceable Yanmar single-cylinder which thudded reassuringly as Bronwyn backed Cheval de Mer out of her berth. All went well until she was out in the channel and making that tricky first turn, and then the overheating alarm came on. Last time that happened, we ended up with a bilge full of oil, so Bronwyn hastily killed the engine and we completed the manoeuvre by hand, using lines, ironically as I’d originally planned. Luckily there were three adults and a child to help with the fending-off.

We got her around without too much fuss, and then pulled her gently into the berth. As the stern swim platform came gently level with the end of the berth, Bronwyn somehow fell off it and banged both thighs on the concrete dock. It hurt a lot, and resulted in significant and colourful bruising.

While Bronwyn sat quietly and thought nice thoughts, the rest of us juggled the available lines into suitable lengths, and it wasn’t long before we had her nicely positioned. In fact, with the stern swim platform facing the end dock, there’s little need to use the midships ladder at all, you can just step on and off the swim platform whatever the tide. It’s a bit of a mystery why the live-aboard owners chose to keep her bow-to in the first place.

Back at home, I got out a large roll of poly rope, and taught myself to splice an eye. It always seems so complicated when you read about it, but in practice it turned out to be pretty simple to make a slightly amateurish but strong eye in the end of the rope.

As always, practice makes perfect, and over a few weeks I made a full set, complete with new stainless-steel shackles and thimbles for the landward side.

I tied the boat-end in a temporary bowline, so that I had some flexibility in choosing a good final length in all tides and weathers without committing yet to a splice at both ends. Meanwhile, I need to figure out what’s wrong with the raw water cooling pump…

Hiking to Cathedral Rock

Every time I drive over the bridge to approach our new house in Kingston, Tasmania, my eye is drawn to a wedge-shaped pillar of rock sticking up over the horizon. The map shows it as “Cathedral Rock”, part of Mount Wellington National Park, but to me it was a red flag crying “Climb me! Climb me!”

This is the story of the day that I chose to climb up Cathedral Rock. To be clear, it’s not actually a vertical climb, as there is a track. The peak is 880 metres above sea level, and the track starts 600 metres lower than that.

My walk began at the North West Bay River, which is wide and shallow and mainly boulders. There are two starting points, and I tried both of them. There is access up the obvious private road from the car park, but it was more fun to climb down into the trickling river and jump from rock to rock up the river bed. After about half a kilometre, the sides of the ravine dropped to river level, allowing me to rejoin the official path, which was anyway always visible on the left bank.

The Cathedral Rock track at this point is narrow, and easy to see in the sunshine. I thought that it might be a bit hard to follow in darkness or in rain, but wherever there was a change of direction, there was a metal pole with a small fluorescent orange triangle to mark the way.

Despite the fact that it was still following the river, the path very soon began to climb steeply upward between the tree ferns.

I was already starting to feel a little out of breath when one of the orange triangles directed me to turn ninety degrees and walk directly away from the river. The path steepened noticeably, up what appeared to be a flash gully.

After only about half an hour on the trail, the path widened, but the slope was continuous and relentless and I was starting to pant heavily. As I trudged onward, sweat poured down my bowed head and dripped off the end of my nose.

I heard voices behind, and two merrily chatting young couples breezed past as if I was standing still. Cursing under my breath, I wondered if this was the first time in all my life of climbing tall things, that anybody has passed me on the trail. Am I getting old?

I plodded on, through stands of razor-sharp cutting grass. Growing up overseas, I still find this plant fascinating, grass that can hurt you. We have five kinds in Tasmania, and I can never resist checking it with my finger. Blood welled instantly. Yup, still sharp.

Scattered on the ground were the shredded leaves of Silver Wattle which had fallen from overhead. It was late in the year, but when the wattle is in flower, it sends sap to the soft outer leaf shoots to attract Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos. As the birds tear into the stems to feast on the sweet sugary liquid, their wings get dusted with wattle pollen, which they then transfer to the flowers of other trees.

The path kept on climbing. I remarked to myself that, of all the tall things that I have climbed all over the world in all kinds of weather conditions, this little track in the relative cool of the Tasmania Autumn, was up there with the hardest of them.

I really needed a break, but I have a rule about resting on hills. Never rest at the bottom or middle of a hill, only ever rest at the top or on a flat. The idea is to stop at an achievement, and to start on flat ground.

I was dying for a rest, but there was no let-up. The path just angled steeply up, zig-zagging as it went. I was at the point of cursing my own stupid rules, when I rounded a bend and the path became briefly level for about ten blessed metres. Well, almost level. Good enough. I slumped down against a comfortable tree, drank half a litre of water, and closed my eyes for a moment.

Heading up and on, the trail narrowed and, finally, became less steep. Now it was more like walking up a hill, rather than pumping every step with eyes fixed on the end of your boots.

Then, about an hour after starting out, I arrived at the base of the final scramble to the summit. The guides for this walk make no mention of the killer ascent thus far, but wax lyrical about the dangers of the final 400 metres, giving it black diamonds and even a warning sign. I was interested to see just how bad this next part could be! As far as I could see, the track just disappeared up a rocky watershed. What would I find next?

Despite the warnings, the final stretch was just a simple scramble, zig-zagging up a rocky incline with plenty of hand- and foot-holds, nothing at all compared to the hard slog of the endless track below.

The summit was a collection of rocky outcrops, firmly gripped by small stands of Black She-Oak and Needle Bush.

The views were spectacular, all the way South down the Huon Valley, and East toward Bruny Island. I could also look back and see the road outside my house, where I first looked up at this rock and wondered if it was climbable.

It was nice to enjoy the open vistas to the South East, but it was the terrain to the North West that was interesting for future expeditions. Cathedral Rock sits on the cusp of a bowl that surrounds the upper reaches of the North West Bay River. From this altitude, I could see that the river bed up here is similar to the terrain at the bottom, mostly dry with flat rocks. I wondered if it would be possible to follow the river bed all the way up here into the bowl, and then climb out of the far end. The map showed that the river intersects with the Pipeline Track which would take me from Mt Wellington National Park and down into the city.

I also looked around to see if there was a track along the ridge top, because in theory I should be able to follow the edge of the bowl around to Wellington Falls, and before long I stumbled on a thin trail that led over the blade of exposed rock and on to the next outcrop.

I chose not to follow any further on this day. I would need to start a lot earlier to get all the way round, and in any case my car was down at the bottom of the Cathedral Rock track and I had no way of retrieving it if I walked down to Hobart. There is, however, plenty of food for thought for my next trip.

I found a peaceful flat rock to sit on, contemplated the view, and ate some lunch. Then, having sated both mind and body, I began the scramble back down to the track.

As before, the rocky scramble was the easiest part. The long hike back down the steep trail looked simple, but again the relentless slope inflicted a slow muscle burn that didn’t let up until I reached the river.

Still, it’s a beautiful walk, and I will be back.

Oil in the Bilges

It was a sunny Sunday morning with light brisk winds, a perfect day for a family sail after weeks of incessant rain. We climbed aboard, cast off, and motored out of our berth.

Immediately an alarm sounded from the panel in the cockpit. I heard it from the bow where I was keeping lookout, but I had only just replaced the depth sounder and had not calibrated it, so I assumed that it was responding to the shallow bottom under the keel. At any rate, squeezing out between rows of expensive boats on a blustery day is not the time to be focussing on electronic problems.

The alarm cut in and out as we navigated around the pontoons, and as we passed out into deep water through the arms of the breakwater I waited for the it to stop. It didn’t, and I saw Bronwyn duck forward from the helm to look more closely at the panel, and she shouted, “it says Low Press”.

Oh dear.

I stuck my head down the hatch and found that our nice clean white bilges were awash with engine oil.

Despite having lost all its oil, the one-cylinder donk was still plugging away, so we used it to get to a nearby mooring buoy. A gust caught us and we missed, and had to go round again, praying that the engine would keep on going. It did, we tied up, and killed the motor.

Now what?

We were stuck out in the Derwent River, on a mooring of unknown provenance. It looked big and well-kept, but we’d never seen anybody use it before.

We had the dinghy on board, although it temporarily lacked either a drainage bung or rowlocks. Still, it was easily enough to get the family back to the marina with diligent use of kayak paddles. We tied up the dinghy in our berth, and went home.

On Monday, we arranged for the yacht club to give us a tow to the yard, so that we could get her out of the water and have a look. It wasn’t really necessary to get her up on land, but she was overdue for an antifoul anyway, and because we bought her quickly for cash, we’d never seen her bottom, so it seemed like a reasonable opportunity to kill several birds with one stone.

As soon as we were up on the cradle, I pumped the oil out of the bilge and cleaned up the mess. The bilge pump – which had never worked very efficiently – was saturated in oil so I took it home for a clean. The unused piping for the water tanks (I’d removed three large tanks when we set her up for sailing rather than live-aboard) was similarly contaminated, so they went too.

The engine was pristine and clean. There was no sign of any leaks, no trails of oil, nothing. The engine sat on its blocks, and the oil sat beneath, with no indication of how it got out.

The oil filter felt rough to touch underneath, and I wondered if it had developed a pinhole. It was very, very tightly fitted, and there was evidence (in the form of crinkles on the underside) that somebody had cranked it on with a strap wrench. I had to puncture it to get it off, so destroyed any real evidence of pinhole leakage. There were also two metal oil pipes that dipped down into the bilges, where they had likely sat in rainwater for some time while the boat was unattended before we bought it, and these pipes showed a crusting of rust. I dismantled it all and ordered replacement parts.

In the meantime, I got busy with the hull. Once I’d power-washed and chipped off all the shellfish, the fibreglass was down to a previous layer of paint, and the steel keel was practically back to metal. There was a chunk missing from the rudder, where an exposed internal screw head was now visible. I applied two-pack resin where appropriate, and two-pack underwater undercoat wherever I thought I needed it.

I would have preferred to rub the whole keel down and apply a smooth finish to the anti-foul, but time was short, the cradle was needed for racers rubbing down for the start of the season, and I did also have to work at my day job. A couple of top coats applied with a roller would have to suffice, on this occasion. She looked OK though.

While she was out of the water, I replaced the sacrificial anodes. The keel anodes were ready for replacement, but the one on the prop shaft was in relatively pristine condition, most likely because it hadn’t been fitted properly and only sat loosely on the shaft. To be fair, the previous owner had warned me that he had replaced it in the water and he wasn’t certain that he had tightened it enough, so I was glad to see any anode at all. I had a working theory that if the shaft anode wasn’t functioning fully, enough current might have leaked to burn a pinhole in the thinnest mild steel in the engine, which would be the oil filter.

The new set of (very expensive) oil pipes arrived from Yanmar. When the dealer got them out of the box, my first response was, “Gosh, they’re so shiny!”

He gave me a knowing look and said “Aaaah, you’ll have the old ones, then.” Some years back, Yanmar changed the design from steel to copper because of corrosion issues. Not quite a smoking gun, but a useful pointer that I might be on the right track.

I fitted the pipes, and then briefly fired up the engine. It started, didn’t knock, and the oil stayed in. I only let it run for about 15 seconds because there was no seawater coolant in the intakes. The proof would be when we put her back in the water and warmed the engine up, but at least there weren’t fountains of oil everywhere.

Pausing only to give the bilges a final clean, and then pessimistically lining them with puppy pads, we pushed her back into the sea.

We tied her up to the jetty, and fired up the engine. We stared fixedly at the bilges. Neither oil nor water appeared.

We waited, and listened to the rhythmic pop-pop-pop of the single cylinder. There was no oil in the bilges.

We put her into gear and strained the engine against the mooring ropes. There was no oil in the bilges.

We sat around until she was good and warm, and until the waiting rubberneckers had lost interest and got back to work, and then we quietly backed off the pontoon and opened her up. She had far more power than we were used to, and her bow pointed eagerly out into the river. She ran like silk.

New acrylic windows for the yacht

Our new boat leaked when it rained. It wasn’t subtle; water poured in around the badly sealed acrylic windows, and through the screw holes, and through the wooden framing.

Given the sheer volume of rain water that we were pumping out of the bilges on every visit, it was clear that this was Item 1 on the agenda.

For the last decade, Cheval de Mer had been sitting in her berth, with the starboard side facing into the prevailing weather. The port side wasn’t too bad, but to starboard the paint had flaked off, and parts of the forty-year-old marine-ply superstructure had degraded to such an extent that they were water-permeable.

My first task was to undo the dozens and dozens of dome-nuts that held the windows on. This was tricky without an assistant, and I didn’t have a mole-grip to hand. I rigged up a spanner hanging from a line on the outside, which provided just enough resistance to undo the screw from the inside. Then return outside to reset the spanner, then back inside. Repeat… it took a while.

The old acrylic windows to starboard then popped out easily in a flurry of weathered wood-flakes.

The port-side windows were fixed with sterner stuff. They had been glued in with a strong sealant, and the only way to get them out was to shatter them with a blunt implement. Eventually I extracted all the shards from the frame, only to find that the sealant itself was still firmly bonded to the paint all down the port side, completely immune to scraping. I got it off by applying a heat-gun, which didn’t affect the sealant but which bubbled up the paint underneath so that I could get the whole mess off with a scraper.

Even though the wood was sodden in places, once covered in a tarpaulin it dried out without warping, although there were significant cracks and dints. Woodwork is not my favourite activity, so I cast around for an easier way to repair the damage. It was then that I discovered the delights of the amazing West System 105 epoxy resin.

This stuff is incredible. You mix it up and slather it onto wood (or fibreglass), and it soaks its way inside the layers, chasing away any water, and then sets to a hard but slightly flexible finish. I spent several days happily painting it onto the exposed wood, and watching it vanish completely inside, before finally it had seeped in everywhere it wanted to go and the final coat stayed on the surface, looking like a thick varnish.

You know how this goes. Sand, fill, sand, fill, sand, fill…

Once I’d done the major work with West System 105, I filled small imperfections with Knead-It, a two-part filler that comes in a handy tube which means that you can just tear off exactly the amount that you need. Eventually there were so many different colours and textures that I couldn’t work out by eye what was flat and what wasn’t, so it was time to add some paint.

I used Norglass Shipshape two-pack primer, which sticks to pretty much everything that my boat is made of. On my first go, I made the mistake of brushing it straight after mixing, when it was still runny and very hard to work with, but I learned to patiently wait the crucial first ten minutes for it to go off. It went on pretty well after that.

Once it was all the same colour, my eye was no longer distracted by all the different textures, and I could properly see the lumps and bumps that needed sanding and filling.

A second coat of primer, a final sand and minor filling, and then a top-coat of two-pack Norglass Norcote. For a short while, at least one part of the boat looked like a million dollars.

I waited a couple of hours for it to dry, but the weather was against me. The temperature was hovering around ten degrees, which is the minimum for curing, and the surface stayed resolutely tacky. Rain was forecast and I had to pick up my daughter from school, so I covered the boat in a tarp.

That night, the wind blew the tarp in so that it stuck to the paint, and I had to peel the whole thing off. Then I had to sand off most of my hard-won polished finish, and deal with some slumping that had occurred in the cold of the night. But at least the surface was now relatively flat and white, and I could move on to the next phase.

Using butcher paper taped to the dock, I made up templates of the new windows that I wanted to fit. They were significantly larger than the originals, because I wanted to completely cover the areas that had been weakened by screw-holes.

Following local advice, I took the templates to Eagle Plastics in Hobart, who gave me a warm welcome and made me some lovely new acrylic windows, 5mm thick with a bevelled edge and a smoky tint.

Scrolling through sailing forums, it soon became clear that the only choice for adhesive was 3M Very High Bond (VHB) tape, which was readily available on the internet from Embossing and Tape Supplies (ETS). This double-sided tape is incredibly easy to use and forms a powerful bond with both the acrylic window and the painted boat.

For the first window, I did make a mistake, in that I didn’t quite butt up the black tape to completely hide the underlying white paint. I had thought that the tint and the shadow would hide the joins, but I was wrong.

In retrospect, I should have used a little black paint either on the window frame or around the inside edges of the window, but such is the power of VHB that you only get the one chance: Once the window was in, I wasn’t going to get it out again without a large hammer.

I did better with the rest of the windows, though. You live and learn.

And finally, to make the whole thing waterproof, I needed to run beading around the outside edges.

Now, according to the forums, there is one and one only solution, and that is to use Cow Dorning’s CowSil 795. In my innocence I had assumed that I would just go and buy some when I needed it, but this American product is not widely available in Tasmania, and I wasn’t going to wait to have it shipped from the US.

I contacted the local Fibreglass Shop who advised that their marine customers have always had good results with an Australian product, FixTech FS200, and moreover they had it waiting for me in stock.

I got out the 3M Scotch blue (in my opinion the only worthwhile masking tape), and carefully taped both the acrylic window and the surrounding painted woodwork.

Like any silicone product, it was quite messy and needed care, but I found that it went on easily enough as long as I didn’t apply it too thickly. The back of a bamboo teaspoon gave a nice finish.

I removed the tape straight away, which gave me the chance to fix up any over-thick portions with my trusty wooden spoon (wetted with soapy water) before it started to cure. No matter what you do, silicone gets everywhere, but I found that dropped spots were easily removed with Goof Off, which also served to clean my spoon and fingers between applications.

On the whole, I think it came out OK.

Surf Lessons

I used to play in the surf when I was younger, usually in a kayak, sometimes on wind-surfers and occasionally on long-boards, always in the freezing deep and stormy Atlantic off the coast of Wales. We never had any surf lessons but had a lot of fun.

More recently, in the warmer waters of Australia, and especially now that our daughter is older, we have spent some time on boogie-boards.

I have also started going out on my inflatable stand-up paddle-board, but while I am fine in lagoons and in flat waters, as soon as I hit any surf, I fall off.

Some time ago, we booked surf lessons with Broulee Surf School on the New South Wales coast, but what with COVID-19 and interrupted travel plans, we never got to take them. Roll on to this week, and we were staying at our favourite holiday house in Lilli Pilli, just up the road from Broulee, and so finally we were able to take them up.

We arrived in the morning to a good rolling swell of late-breaking waves. Recent storms had rearranged the bottom to provide an interesting selection of rips and hollows. Three of us met Robert, our instructor, for a couple of hours of personal lessons.

Robert was very relaxed and confident, but must have wondered what he’d let himself in for with three middle-aged suburbanite newbies. Our first exercise was to lie on our boards on the sand, and lift into a push-up and then downward dog… and repeat. In retrospect, I wonder how many people fail that first test?

Since I was in the water, and didn’t feel like breaking out the Go-Pro, I don’t have any photos of us, but I do have pictures of Berrima doing the same course on a different day.

Once we’d mastered the art of correctly placing our feet, it was time to get into the water.

Once again, Robert instilled us with confidence, holding the board as we lay prone, and then gently pushing us onto smaller waves so that we could pop up and practice the standing manoeuvre.

As we got more confident, he pushed us onto bigger and bigger waves. Sometimes we wiped out, but the first time that I pumped the board from side to side to steer all the way to the beach, I was so stoked. A huge grin split my face. I was surfing!

Of course, Robert was doing all the set-up and positioning me perfectly on each wave. When I tried catching my own, it didn’t go nearly so well! But the buzz was amazing. Even with the relatively small waves, it was very tiring to fight back out to where Robert bobbed beyond the break, but every time I struggled straight back out, knowing already that I wanted the next run to be better.

Each time he set me up for a wave, Robert just offered me one quiet piece of advice before letting me go. He didn’t need to do more than that, because it quickly became clear as soon as I was moving whether or not I’d made a mistake, even (as I quickly found out) a recoverable one. Whether it was a complete wipe-out or (whoop! whoop!) a great run all the way to shore, a minute later I was swimming back out shaking my head, determined to do better on the next run.

Berrima heads back out to the surf

Colquhoun Mountain Bike Trail

We were driving from Hobart in Tasmania to Lilli Pilli in New South Wales for a beach holiday, but rather than do the whole thing in one boring drive, we decided to pitch camp a couple of times, and visit the Colquhoun Mountain Bike Trail in Victoria along the way.

On our previous mountain bike adventure we had rented bikes on site, but this was supposed to be a budget trip, so we decided to bring our own bikes with us, particularly as Bronwyn had just bought a perilously expensive e-bike.

This entailed the purchase of a hitch-mounted bike rack that could take the weight of the e-bike. After some research we found that there was only really one make and model available to us in Hobart at short notice, the Yakima Hold-Up, so we went with that one.

When folded, the rack occludes the car’s number plate, and when loaded with bikes, it partially occludes the number plate and also some of the lights. I was concerned about the legality of driving around like this, but after attempting to order a bike rack number-plate from Service Tasmania (sorry, not available for up to six weeks) and an accessory light-bar (sorry, not available at any cost), we took local advice (“just go, nobody cares”) and headed for the ferry terminal.

Since it was a public holiday weekend, we passed a number of police breathalyser and speed checks and so on and indeed discovered that nobody seemed to care.

The Spirit of Tasmania ferry arrived in Melbourne after a calm overnight crossing of the Bass Strait, and as soon as we disembarked, we breakfasted on the beach close by the terminal.

Breakfast done, we headed East through Gippsland, stopping on the way for a gentle cycle around a lake, then moving on to the Colquhoun Mountain Bike Park which really blew us away. It’s a free track inside the State Forest, consisting of a figure-of-eight black diamond track a little over 15km long, amusingly called the Scalectric Loop. Given our amateur status, we decided to tackle just the bottom ring of the 8 on this occasion, although we left open the idea of completing the top ring if we felt up to it.

The ride began on the Start Line Track, which was comprised of gentle rolling turns through beautiful forest before devolving into the Lollipop Track. This second part is hilarious. It follows the line of a muddy creek down hill, sweeping down to cross the creek before turning back to cross it again… and again… and again…

Each crossing had muddy water at the bottom, or a steep muddy descent, or a steep muddy climb out the other side, or some combination of all three. And it crossed, and crossed, and crossed back and forth. I have no idea how many times we splashed through the creek. Bronwyn was OK on her e-bike, and little Berrima was fine with her unlimited low-to-the-ground seven-year-old energy, but my 20-year old Giant hybrid bike with city tyres was in a permanent slide, and at one point I lost focus for a fraction of a second and crashed somewhat spectacularly, thankfully missing most of the trees alongside the muddy descent, but banging my knee pretty hard.

After many, many creek crossings and perhaps 6 kilometres we were starting to feel a bit tired, even though by now the Lollipop Track had turned into the less demanding Log Track. We were quite relieved to find a signposted ‘B-line’ which skipped the last few crossings and allowed us to quit the trail and ride back to the car park, covered in mud and very satisfied.

We’re certainly keen to see what lies beyond, in the top half of the figure-eight, but will need to return with adequate food and water and a whole day to do it.

For the moment, though: Back to the car, back to the tent, then next morning we were on the road again and heading toward our next camp site.

Gravity Mountain Biking

Our new house is within easy striking distance of a handful of “gravity” downhill mountain bike trails. Our daughter Berrima is nearly seven, and we reckoned that she was strong and confident enough on a bicycle for us to all try this new sport as a family.

Finding ourselves with a spare week due to a pandemic-cancelled holiday, we loaded the car with camping gear and set off for the two-hour trip from Hobart to Maydena, billed as “the largest gravity park in the Southern hemisphere”.

We stopped at the Mount Field campground which is convenient to Maydena, inexpensive and very pleasant. It is situated on the banks of the Tyenna River in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. After a comfortable night, we struck camp and headed for Maydena.

Maydena Mountain Bike Park

The town of Maydena, population 200, really only contains the Bike Park and a small cafe. We drove right into the park, rented some lightweight Trek bikes with fat tyres and front suspension, and rolled up to the trail head. This was really a dirt bus stop where you could choose either a minibus with a trailer which took serious riders 820m vertically to the top of the mountain, or a Canam quad with five tow-bar hangers which took beginner and intermediate riders up the steep trail to the top of the ‘green’ runs. We chose the quad. Berrima’s bike was too small for the hangers, but fitted neatly into the luggage tray on the back of the Canam.

As we bounced up the fire trail, the driver helpfully pointed out some landmarks, such as the point where the championship run jumps completely over the access trail. After only five or ten minutes, he left us standing in the middle of a shady rain-forest, pointing us in the direction of a thin track disappearing into the shadows.

The path sloped suspiciously upward, but our guide had warned us that it was only for the first dozen metres or so, and after that it was all gravity, so we shrugged and set off.

He was not wrong. The trail began to descend steeply, and before long we were flying round steeply sloping berms as we zig-zagged wildly down through the forest. The bikes were reliable, the surface smooth granite, the sun was shining, the forest was beautiful.

After some time we dropped out of the tree-line into an area of fox-gloves in full flower, butterflies flitting above as we rocketed down the side of mountain. It was exhilarating for all three of us, but especially Berrima who delighted in hitting the berms at full speed.

Once at the bottom, it was time to catch the Canam back to the top and do it all again.

When it was time for lunch, we briefly considered the onsite canteen – just crisps and sandwiches really – and then stepped outside of the gates to the only other business in Maydena, the Fika Time cafe / petrol station, which advertised great coffee and gluten-free food. Sadly, it was not to be. The ‘small black’ coffee when it came was enormous and bitter, and we waited and waited for our simple three serves of eggs. Eventually, two plates arrived, but one of them was wrong and had to be replaced. When the replacement arrived – but not the third lunch – we were starving, so we shared the two eggs between us. Eventually we asked about the third portion, which set off this whole diatribe about how they were very busy (they weren’t) and COVID and goodness knows what else. Then mysteriously they weren’t able to refund the third meal, so we took a cake in lieu, which wasn’t anywhere near the correct value, and went back to the bike-park cafe for some crisps before continuing our ride.

The Friendly Beaches and the Bay of Fires

From Maydena to the next nearest mountain bike park in St Helens is about a four-hour drive, so we broke the journey along the coastline, taking in some of the famous beaches and enjoying an impromptu steak by the side of the road.

We had booked a couple of nights at an unpowered site at the rather spectacular Tasman Holiday Park on the Bay of Fires in St Helens. It is spectacular not so much for the park itself (although it is a very well appointed caravan park), but for the tremendous Parkside Bar and Kitchen, where we enjoyed some wonderful meals, a great wine list, and impeccable service.

St Helens Mountain Bike Park

While it is theoretically possible to rent mountain bikes from Gravity Isle at the St Helens park itself, their website was being uncooperative, so we had arranged a day’s hire with Vertigo in town, who offered a shuttle up to the trail head as part of the package.

There is a further shuttle that takes you higher to the more advanced runs, but the way that the St Helens green runs are arranged is that they leave from and return to the same trail head. Because the green trails go up and down but start and finish at the same altitude, they involve a lot more pedalling than the downhill runs at Maydena. Thus although the runs are shorter, they are a lot more tiring.

As well as pedalling through pretty forests, the designers had also made the trails interesting, with rocks interspersed with mud, berms, tree-trunks, exposed roots, and the occasional little stump jump.

Half way through the day, we bought lunch at the converted shipping container that served as a cafe at the trailhead. Following our culinary experience at Maydena, we were a little hesitant, and indeed weren’t unduly shocked when we were presented with microwaved burgers and oven chips, with the meat still frozen in the middle.

Everything else about this new sport seems to be high-end; the land areas are huge, access is difficult, staffing levels are high, and the bikes and equipment are eye-wateringly expensive to buy. But in the realms of food preparation, at two out of three of the top gravity venues in Tasmania, we found ourselves underwhelmed by the food. Don’t mountain-bikers eat?

Luckily we had packed some chocolate bars, so we wolfed them down and drank some water and got back on the trails. By the time we’d tried all the green trails several times, we were tired and ready to stop. The exit run is called ‘Downtown’ and is a beautiful ride down the mountain, through the forests to sea level, with fast descents and switch-back berms. It was a lot of fun in itself, and finished with a gentle ride along the St Helens foreshore.

Back at the Parkside Bar in St Helens, over very welcome gourmet food and drinks, we mused that we could get used to this as a family adventure, and are looking forward to the next one.

The History of our Snook 26

We have just purchased a pocket cruiser, registered as a 1978 Snook 26. Since there is no record of Michael Snook ever designing a 26-foot version of his famous racing boat, we were curious about her history. Luckily for us, a previous owner had left on board a potted history of the yacht.

She was originally launched as a standard Snook 22 racing yacht, purchased by a Steve Lovell, whose nickname was ‘Shovel’. He raced her as ‘Shovel’ out of Bellerive in southern Tasmania.

A year later, he hauled her out and cut her in half with a chainsaw. Aided and abetted by Michael Snook himself, he spent three weeks inserting a four-foot pre-prepared centre section, increasing the total length to 26 feet (a change from 6.7 to 8 metres). To balance the boat, they moved the keel aft, and increased the draft from 1.3 to 1.7 metres. Arguably just for fun, they also increased the height of the mast to a 9 metre luff, and extended the boom out to 3 metres.

In this new format, Shovel raced very successfully, and – by virtue of the extended cockpit (which was known locally as ‘the beer garden’) – became a popular venue for post-race drinks and, by all accounts, some pretty disreputable parties.

At some point in the nineteen-eighties, Steve sold Shovel and moved to the mainland. The next known report is from a subsequent owner, Dennis, who found her in a dilapidated state in Devonport in Northern Tasmania. Dennis helped the then owners to rebalance the boat – now known as ‘Kermit’ – as a cruiser, and later bought her from them and sailed her back to Hobart. He reported that, even detuned, she was still very fast, with a propensity for surfing on the swell that had to be continually damped by means of trailing drogues.

Now berthed at the marina, Dennis and Fiona fitted her out as a live-aboard cruising boat. To increase the living space, they lifted the coach roof to give 6 feet of headroom while extending the cabin back into the ‘beer garden’ to return it to a more reasonably sized cockpit. They added a larger rudder, a pushpit, an inboard Yanmar engine, and had the interior fitted out with bunks, drawers, sinks, table, chairs and a head.

They wanted to rename her, too, and were keen to retain some reference to the Snook’s long and interesting history. After some thought, ‘Shovel’ became ‘Cheval’, and then by obvious inference, ‘Cheval de Mer’.

Dennis and Fiona lived aboard for some 13 years, and I infer from the charts that I found in a stern locker, that they travelled to the mainland and then up the NSW coast at least as far as Port Stephens.

In around 2004 she was back in Hobart, and was acquired by Tom as a permanent live-aboard. He didn’t sail her much, but made some changes more in keeping with her new function as a stationary home. About five years later, Tom’s work took him to the US, where he remained for two years. Cheval de Mer slowly aged in the marina, starboard side facing into the weather, where the paint abraded away from the coach house and she began to leak.

On his return, Tom found himself in changed circumstances and living on land, and he just wanted to pass the yacht on to somebody who would appreciate her. And that is where we came in.

Despite spending nearly a decade largely stationary, her hull seemed sound, the moving parts were all still moving, and the only issues seemed to be with the ply of the cabin top. In the middle of a pandemic and with the marina’s hard-standing already full of racing yachts getting tuned for the season, taking her out of the water for an inspection was a non-starter, so we took a deep breath and bought her warts and all without either a test sail or a professional survey.

As soon as we took possession, we emptied her out, and took her out on the water. She performed beautifully in the gusty light winds of the day, with a slight tendency to lee helm as she appeared to be massively over-powered. Considering her history, that’s not at all surprising, and we’re happy that we just need to settle in and get comfortable with her.

The Pocket Cruiser

Some years ago, we sold our live-aboard cruising yacht Elizabeth when we decided that we weren’t brave enough to continue with our world cruising plans in the company of a small baby. In the intervening years, we have often looked in a dreamy way at the yacht listings, but it was never either practical or the right time. Finally, however, the stars aligned in our favour: We found ourselves living by the coast on the island of Tasmania, next to arguably the best cruising ground in Australia, and our daughter turned six and began to show an interest in the world of sailing.

We were monitoring the sales listings for live-aboard cruising yachts around the Southern hemisphere, and looking for something a lot cheaper and older than either of our previous standard production boats Pindimara or Elizabeth. We reckoned that we were now experienced enough to tackle something a little more bespoke and unusual, and there were plenty of interesting candidates out there, many of which had been circumnavigating with families aboard for years.

We had been talking to agents in the US and New Zealand, and although there were plenty of boats for sale, we were prevented from travelling to either destination by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Then a couple of interesting yachts popped up right in our own neighbourhood, and we went to have a look. On the walk back from the marina berth of a particularly interesting steel-hulled Adams 35, we passed a lovely little blue pocket cruiser with a hand-written ‘for sale’ sign tied to the shrouds.

The owner, Tom, was aboard, and showed us around. She was a sound 26-footer that had been used for several decades as a live-aboard at the marina, but all her rigging was in place and she had a newish engine and, we were told, a full sail inventory. Tom had been stuck in the US for the last two years due to work and the pandemic, and so the little boat had sat wallowing unattended for all that time and now sported flaking paint on the coach house and significant rain-water in the bilges. Nevertheless, she appeared to be fundamentally sound, had a recent insurance survey, and was very very cheap as the owner had moved ashore and didn’t need her as a home any more.

As a coastal pocket cruiser, she wasn’t at all the kind of boat that we’d been looking for, but she felt good aboard and the price was very appealing. We slept on the idea, and then realised that this might be exactly the kind of yacht that we needed. Because our 6-year old daughter had just started school, we were unlikely to need an ocean-capable cruising yacht in the near future, and knew from experience that such vessels can be horribly expensive to keep in trim if only sailed at the weekend rather than cruising aboard. We have regular jobs and a couple of building projects on the go, and wouldn’t be sailing on a daily basis. Furthermore, at only 26 feet and steered with a tiller, she might be just the boat to teach an enthusiastic little girl how to sail.

We had thought that whatever boat we finally purchased, we would keep her on our own mooring near to our bush property to the south of the island. However, Tom had already established that the marina would be happy for us to take over the lease on the existing berth, which was only minutes from our newly built house.

We handed over the cash, and are now proud owners of an elderly but cute Snook 26, named Cheval de Mer.

Hiking the Organ Pipes Track

From our house in Kingston, Tasmania we could see snow up on Mt Wellington, so we thought we’d go up and have a closer look. There is a road that leads from Hobart city centre up to the Pinnacle, but it’s sometimes closed to traffic in inclement weather, so we booked a ticket on the Mt Wellington Explorer bus which always has access through the snow gates.

The bus has the advantage of being a hop-on hop-off so you can take advantage of the many trails that lead up and down and around the mountain, and still always get home by flagging down the bus at one of the stops. We hadn’t realised that we would be getting an entertaining guide in the form of the driver, but we did, a wide-ranging history of settlements on and around the mountain.

Up at the top, at 1271 metres, we had snow to play in, and marvellous views of the surrounding islands and bays.

It was frankly freezing in the wintry wind. The temperature at the top of Mt Wellington is usually several degrees colder than Hobart at sea level, and the reason that Hobart is such a comfortable place to live, is that the mountain takes the brunt of all the Antarctic weather.

The bus waits at the top for about half an hour on each trip. We’d spoken to the driver about which walks might be good today, and it was his opinion that the tracks from the Pinnacle were all treacherously icy today, so he recommended dropping us at The Chalet so that we could do the 4km Organ Pipes Track down to The Springs. He also offered to radio the next bus so that they knew to expect us.

The Chalet was an interesting place, a stone hut clearly meant to provide shelter from inclement weather. It had a barbecue outside for sunny days, and a large fireplace and a stack of firewood for those who might be cold and wet.

The Springs is downhill from The Chalet, but the path confusingly sets off upward and back towards The Pinnacle. However, it soon sorts itself out and gently follows the contours down towards the base of the Organ Pipes, the most obvious feature of the mountain when viewed from afar.

First, though, it crosses an enormous boulder field, remnants of the great “Glenorchy landslide” of 1872, Tasmania’s most devastating recorded landslip which destroyed a fair few properties on its way to the sea, thankfully with no loss of life. If the same thing happened today, the consequences on North Hobart would be disastrous.

These days, the boulder fields are well bedded in and are popular with climbers.

The original Organ Pipes track was built, along with much of the mountain’s infrastructure, in the early 1930s as a way to provide work for the huge numbers of unemployed following the Great Depression (the unemployment rate in Tasmania was 27% in 1931). The work was back-breaking but stood the test of time, with the tracks only being reworked in 2017, itself a mammoth task taking two years.

The new path is constructed largely from painstakingly laid natural stones. and is in itself quite beautiful.

After a while, the Organ Pipes themselves came into view on the right hand side, a formation of massive dolerite pipes. Several marked trails led in that direction, bearing the warning, “suitable only for climbers”.

The track then descends into mountain woodlands, with birds flitting about and, on our visit, flowers breaking out to herald the Spring. The purity of the air is demonstrated by the festoons of lichens hanging from the tree branches and clinging to the rocks.

As we descended out of dry sclerophyll and into wet heath forest, we encountered some interesting shrubs endemic to Tasmania, including Richea dracophylla which was just starting to bud.

Shortly after this, the track was crossed by a noticeable scar caused by the passage of an enormous rock, 50 tonnes of dolerite that parted company with the Organ Pipes in 2014 and came to rest on the downhill side of the track. Looking uphill, the boulder’s path is still vivid, all the way to the top.

Down at The Springs, with its cafeteria and car park, we found the bus waiting for us at the bus stop, which took us down to the city for a spot of lunch.

Wellington Park, which at 30km across is one of the largest reserved areas in Tasmania (outside the incredible World Heritage Area), is criss-crossed with interesting trails like this one, and we will be back to do some more.

Irrigation Irritation

It all started out so simply. Since we had been forced to put our plans for an off-grid house in the forest on the back burner, and had quickly built a different house on an urban block nearby, we were left with 14 acres of woodland which would provide us with an endless supply of firewood and the odd camping weekend, and… what else?

I could grow vegetables. And perhaps honey. Maybe ducks.

But let’s start with vegetables.

I decided that my preference would be to work in 10m x 5m plots. I find that area easy to handle with manual tools and, let’s face it, the dimensions make the math easy. Having several identically-sized autonomous blocks, rather than a rambling smallholding, also means that if disaster (irrigation failure, possum attack) visits one block then I haven’t lost everything.

The land slopes at around 8-10 degrees, so I needed to choose my sites carefully if I was to avoid repeatedly staggering up and down from the tool shed. Given that our access road leads only to our putative building site, and that the site itself is still largely covered in freshly felled trees, my options were somewhat limited. In the end I chose a slightly undersized area close to the tool shed, near to a line of native cherry and sedge which appear to define an underground seep.

The soil

I unlimbered the trusty mattock, and set to work.

With the area cleared of Common Heath, ferns and debris, I set up a 1.8m fence to keep out the wallabies and possums, and dug over to about 10cm. The soil is sandy clay, and pretty easy to manage.

The soil may be easy to work, but it is very poor quality. After some manoeuvring, a helpful fork-lift driver at Horticultural and Landscape Supplies north of Hobart managed to drop a cube-and-a-half bale of SeaGreens kelp compost onto my trailer. I somewhat gingerly towed it to Lymington, and got it up the track.

It took a little while to shovel it out and dig it in, but the plot started to look pretty good.

It was the height of Summer, and the ground was bone-dry. No matter how good my compost, no seeds were going to sprout in these conditions. It was time to install some irrigation.

The irrigation tank

I reckoned that a 2000 litre rainwater tank was probably the biggest I could handle by myself, and should be equal to the needs of my vegetable patch (but read on!).

There are many suppliers of rainwater tanks in Australia, most of whom operate on a just-in-time build-and-deliver business model, which didn’t suit me because access to the property is still problematic, particularly for delivery trucks. However, I happened to be out at Global Poly investigating pumps and cartage when they mentioned that they almost always keep some spare 2000s on the forecourt. I put one on the trailer and took it home.

The builders at our new house in Kingston had finished work, and had left behind a pile of surplus blue-stone from their installation of our household rainwater tanks. Berrima and I shovelled about a tonne into a bulk bag on the trailer, towed it to the forest, and spent a happy afternoon crafting a tank stand.

Now I needed a way to fill up the tank. In the future, I have grand plans to fill all my irrigation tanks from the roof run-off of an oversized shed, but that project is still just a twinkle in my eye. In the meantime, I needed to sort out cartage. There are a number of local water cartage firms who will bring a tanker to your property, but again I was concerned about access for heavy commercial vehicles, so I decided to create my own cartage system.

Water cartage

Originally I looked around for a second-hand Intermediate Bulk Container (IBC). These metal-bound plastic tanks are designed to be handled by a fork-lift and are used all over the world to deliver all kinds of liquid products. They fit neatly onto a trailer or in the back of a ute. It’s usually possible to pick up a food-grade IBC at a reasonable cost, but with COVID playing havoc with the logistics, this was not a good time to try to find one in Tasmania.

Once again, Global Poly came to my rescue. They sell compact ‘Fire Cubes’, designed to be used in conjunction with a generator and a pump in fire-fighting from the back of a ute. At 900 litres, a full tank would exceed the carrying capacity of my trailer, so it would take three partial loads to completely fill up my irrigation tank, which seemed acceptable.

I already had a spare generator that I’d bought for the convenience of the tradesmen working on our Kingston house, and a simple Chinese pump only set me back a hundred dollars or so from my friends at Global Poly, so I was good to go. I pumped water into the cube from my house rainwater tanks, drove to the property, and pumped it back out. And repeat.

Drip Irrigation

I had previously set up small household drip and spray systems running through timers under mains pressure, but I had no real idea how to set up a gravity-fed system on this scale. My gut feel was that, unless I wanted to mess around with tall tank stands, I would need an electric pump to run the system, but I was open to the suggestion of letting it flow out under gravity. There’s a great deal of conflicting and often quite complex advice on the internet, and I wasn’t able to make a firm decision. I did notice that Hobart company Hollander Imports received a lot of local praise. They don’t have a proper web presence, only a Facebook page, so I drove into Hobart and ambled into their office, hoping for some advice.

The gentleman behind the desk listened carefully as I described the size of the tank, the size of the plot, and the slope of the land, and then pronounced the site ideal for a gravity feed system. He loaded me up with coils of piping, constant-pressure drip line, and handfuls of taps, joins and clips. He reckoned that the constant-pressure line would compensate for the change in pressure as the tank emptied, and would provide an even supply of water. He also recommended that I didn’t bother with all the fancy delivery-and-collector patterns published on the internet, but just to run both my plants and my drip lines downhill from a horizontal feed pipe.

The plot is 40 minutes from my house, so I needed a way of automatically turning it on and off as I didn’t want it dripping 24 hours a day (I had nowhere enough water for that!). Hollander Imports sold me a battery-powered mechanical timer, which controlled a simple flow gate.

I took all of it up to the land and, leaving the timer aside for the moment, connected the plumbing components together in their approximate final configuration. I manually opened the tap on the irrigation tank, and it all worked perfectly.

I unplugged the piping from the tank valve, and inserted the timer into the line. It toggled on and off correctly according to its program, but even when “on”, it drastically reduced the flow to a rather pathetic dribble. This needed some more investigation.

The secret is in the timing

There was clearly something not quite right with my choice of timer. Eventually, deep in some technical specifications that I found online, I discovered that the physical valve in the unit requires a minimum head pressure in order to fully open. I scribbled some numbers on the back of an envelope, and clearly the gravity system wasn’t ever going to deliver enough of a head; unless I wanted to raise my 2000 litre tank several metres above the plot, this particular unit required mains pressure to ensure that the valve opened fully.

I did some scouting around, and found a timer that – according not only to the wording on the box, but also to the detailed technical specifications – was designed specifically for gravity-feed drip-lines, which as a bonus allowed the electronic operation of up to four separate gates. I bought one, with a single gate, and set it up.

Unfortunately, this new valve didn’t perform much better than the first one. Despite its advertised capabilities, it too needed a minimum head pressure if the valve was to fully open.

I went back to my original gut feel; I would need a pumped system.

Oh boy, the internet is full of advice about irrigation pumps.

Eventually, though, I found some bloggers who had set up similar small systems, and the general consensus was that you could get good results by using an inexpensive pump from an ornamental garden fountain. These pumps have the double advantage that they operate on a pressure that is low enough not to overload the drip fittings, and they are cheap to replace if they go wrong.

Of course, these pumps need electricity. I got out a couple of solar panels and a battery box which I use to run my Engel fridge while four-wheel-driving and camping. I set this up in my shed, and bought a simple mechanical timer to control the pump.

I turned it on, and the water flowed gently out of the drip feeder. I set it up to run for half an hour, morning and night, calculating that this would use 1000 litres a week, or a fortnight for the full tank. Contented, I drove home.

Where has all my water gone?

A couple of days later, I returned. The soil had clearly been watered, but the tank was empty. That was nearly a thousand litres in two days. Puzzled, I refilled the tank, re-did the math (same answer), and turned down the flow on the pump.

Despite this glitch, the system appeared to be working in the sense that it was wetting the ground, and time was ticking on and I didn’t want to miss the Autumn planting season. It wasn’t perfect, but I needed to plant some seeds.

Tasmanian soil is fairly consistent across the State, and has a mineral profile that lacks certain essential ingredients for vegetable gardening. I had found an organic fertiliser recipe in the excellent book ‘Tasmanian Food Gardening’ by Steve Solomon, and had for some time been tracking down the ingredients from local suppliers.

I mixed up enough for ten square metres, sprinkled it around, and planted the seeds of some winter vegetables. Apart from the niggle of the water usage, everything seemed to be going smoothly.

A few days later I returned, and the tank was once again empty. I had other things to take care of, but the seeds were sprouting and we were in the middle of a drought, so for the next few weeks I was taking every spare moment to drive back and forth, towing thousands of litres of water and pumping them into the ravening maw of my irrigation system.

At last, after several weeks of this craziness, I was able to put aside a whole day to sit quietly without the distractions of work, of house-building, of firewood, or of small children, and to turn the system on and off and to observe it carefully.

Firstly, the mechanical timer was not keeping time at all. During the past fortnight I had noticed that it would be running anything from one to twelve hours behind (or possibly ahead, who knew?). I had it set to switch the pump on for 30 minutes, twice a day, but if the timer wasn’t reliable, how long was it really pumping for?

I took the timer out of the system, and, sitting quietly in the sunshine, began switching the pump on and off manually. Because it’s a low-pressure drip system, it isn’t immediately obvious from the business end whether it’s on or off. Once the pump stops, the pipes spend an appreciable time slowly draining, and you have to watch the drip nodes very closely to see if any water is coming out, especially as – without pump pressure – only the nodes on the underside, hidden against the soil, are working.

Time and patience eventually won out, and I proved to my satisfaction that, once the pump switched off, the pipe continued to siphon slowly throughout the day, quietly draining the tank until it was empty. There was a satisfying magical moment when I turned the pump off and stabbed an air-hole at the highest point of the hose. The system aspirated loudly, and the flow stopped.

When the pump is on, it now spurts a little fountain out of the cut hose, but the water returns to the tank, the pump and drip line compensate for the pressure loss, and the fountain makes a pleasant tinkling sound that tells me when the irrigation is on.

Remember the problem with the mechanical timer? I replaced it with a digital timer, which keeps perfect time. Later, I tried the mechanical timer at home, on mains power, and it ran perfectly; there must be something about running it on the inverter of the battery box that confuses it.

Catching the rain for irrigation

One day, we’ll build a shed with a large roof which will capture tens of thousands of litres, which will solve all our water supply problems. Right now, though, we have other priorities, but I was not unaware of the craziness of towing thousands of litres across country with a big V8 several times a week.

Our builders in Kingston had ordered a batch of incorrectly coloured roofing panels, which were sitting in the garden of our house, awaiting disposal. I put them in the trailer, added a stack of cheap construction timber and some guttering, and built myself a rain-catcher. It won’t really collect a lot of rain in the dry season, but – bearing in mind that the irrigation system is agnostic to the weather, and pumps rain or shine – it keeps the tank topped up in the wet.

Yes, it would be possible to add a rain sensor. It’s on my ‘nice to have’ list.

South Bruny Island Cruise

From our temporary accommodation in Birchs Bay Tasmania, we look out every day across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to the shores of neighbouring Bruny Island. The ferry operates from Kettering, a few minutes up the road, so it would have been rude not to go and explore.

The island is 50km long and made up of North and South Bruny Islands which are separated by a narrow isthmus, known as The Neck. The North is largely given over to sheep farming, while the South is mostly National Park that is inaccessible to traffic. The easiest way to explore is by boat, and the best way to do this is through Pennicott Wilderness Journeys.

We caught the Pennicott bus from Kettering, which took us across on the ferry and then through North Bruny Island, across The Neck (stopping to look at the views and penguin rookery), and then boarded one of their iconic yellow RIBs at their base (and seafood restaurant) in Adventure Bay.

Almost as soon as we had left the dock, we were surrounded by bottlenose dolphins.

The dolphins loved the powerful wake of the triple 250hp outboards, and our skipper Mick ran doughnuts so that they could play in the waves. As with whales, dolphins have this remarkable ability to make humans laugh and smile when we see them exuberantly playing in the wild. It was a great start to what was going to be a wonderful cruise.

Leaving the dolphins behind, we began to explore the towering columns of Jurassic dolerite that form South Bruny Island’s Fluted Cape. The flat-bottomed boat could get up close and personal with the rock formations and caves, and had more than enough power to get in an out against the swell.

The cliffs are stupendous, among the tallest dolerite columns in the world. They are perforated by numerous sea caves, one of which is largely underwater and forms a spectacular blow-hole as wet air is pumped out by the swell pushing in. The skipper amused the crowd by poking the boat’s bow into the top of the cave as it spat salty spray all over us.

Nearby was an island colony of black-faced shags, who seemed completely unperturbed by our presence. They’re fairly common on islets off Southern Australia, building their nests from seaweed and driftwood.

Rounding the Cape, we found ourselves out in the Southern Ocean. The skipper opened the throttle, the three 250 horsepower Yamahas on the stern kicked in, and we blew past the aptly named Bridge Island, heading South.

We were headed toward a group of four dolerite islands known collectively as The Friars, home to a male colony of rare Australian Fur Seals. They live here in a somewhat cantankerous group, travelling to the Bass Strait to meet up with females in October, each one potentially servicing up to 50 females before returning home, presumably exhausted and ready to rest for another year.

Around the corner is a colony of animals formerly known as New Zealand Fur Seals, more recently termed Long Nosed Fur Seals. They are closely related to the Australian, but form separate colonies.

On a beach all by itself, we were lucky to see an Elephant Seal. A few years ago, an 800kg female of this species rampaged through the camp site at Adventure Bay, damaging a caravan and demolishing fences and picnic tables. She was eventually lured away by a fish on a piece of string. The one that we saw was pretty placid, though.

Turning back toward South Bruny Island, my breath was taken away by the beauty of the landscape. The sea and the sky matched in shades of vivid blue, and across the towering dolerite peaks of Fluted Cape, the highlands of mainland Tasmania loomed in the distance.

We’re living at the bottom of the world, and we love it!

What’s happening in the forest?

If, Gentle Surfer, you have been following our blog from the beginning, then you will be wondering what happened to our off-grid house in the forest.

Once the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all the State borders, it played merry hell with our logistics and we had to temporarily abandon our plans. I had paid off the landscaping and road-building contractors without ever seeing how far they had got with their work. This was my first opportunity in almost a year to see what the site looks like today.

My first priority was the state of the new road into our property. I had arranged, over the phone, for dozens of tonnes of rock to be spread up the lower reaches of the road after it had been levelled, but had no real idea how far the contractors had got or what it was going to look like.

In the event, too much loose rock had been laid over the load that had previously been compacted, making it hard going even for our rented 4WD, and the top part of the road had no aggregate at all, and was starting to grow ferns.

Evidently I’ve got a bit of work to do on the road, over the Summer!

My second priority was to see just how much levelling had been achieved on the actual building site. The contractor had been working on a cut in which we were to build our 6×12 metre shed-cum-solar-farm, and all I knew was that he had made some progress and then had had to stop when the track motor burned out on his digger, for which he was unable to source spare parts due to lockdown in China.

Now that we’ve shifted our primary residence to our other project, we don’t need so many solar panels in the forest and thus such a big shed, but I wanted to know how much levelling had already been done and whether we could build a smaller structure there. At the very least, perhaps we’d have somewhere flat to camp when we visit…

In the event, Dan had done most of the digging-out and about a third of the levelling. It’s not ideal, but is a good start to work with once we finally get down there.

As for the building site itself, well, it’s still liberally scattered with the timber that I felled on my last visit, now nicely overgrown with ferns. My immediate plan is to clear the timber, split it into firewood, build a solar irrigation system, and plant vegetables.

Once the current house build project has finished and we’ve settled in to our new home, the forest will be waiting just down the road. We certainly haven’t given up on that project and have already started thinking ahead and making plans.

As they used to say in the newspaper trade, watch this space!

In the Flesh

Our new house in Kingston is almost finished, but – because of pandemic restrictions to cross-border travel – we had still seen neither the house nor the land that it sits on. The whole project had thus far been conducted entirely over the internet.

The border between ACT and TAS opened in mid-November, and Link Airways laid on an unusual direct service from Canberra to Hobart, so we took the opportunity to fly down and – for the first time – see our project in the flesh.

There was a short delay at Canberra Airport when the ground crew realised that the HF aerial had snapped from the top of the fuselage and was wrapped around the tail fin (you can just about see it at the top of the photo below), but in the end we boarded anyway. I chatted briefly to the captain on the way up the stairs, and he quipped “We don’t use HF anyway”.

Although the builders had been good at posting progress photos on the internet, we’d never seen any of it for real, so it was with some trepidation that we approached the building site for the first time.

We were relieved to find that it all looked exactly as we expected.

This visit also gave us a welcome opportunity to look at the surrounding area. The last time we’d seen pictures of the plot was from our bush-fire assessment, when there was nothing there but empty grass. Today, what a different picture!

The fledgling streets are crammed with tradesmen’s vehicles, skips, back-hoes, pile of earth, stacks of temporary fencing. The houses are springing up like mushrooms along the edge of the creek, which has been planted with native shrubs in plastic tubes.

The neighbouring buildings are quite close, so we are glad that we are in a quiet cul-de-sac to the front, with creek and shrubbery to the rear. It will be interesting to meet our new neighbours; from the state of their buildings, it looks like we’ll all be taking up residence together, early in the New Year.

Moving the house!

With the foundation posts installed last week, the builders have been working swiftly at the factory to finish the interior of the house. They only had a week to finish up before moving the house 200 km overnight across Tasmania from Westbury, near Launceston, to its final resting place in Kingston, near Hobart.

Yesterday, the tilers finished up the bathrooms, installed the vanities and hooked up the plumbing.

Meanwhile, the cabinet makers assembled the joinery and plumbing in the kitchen and pantry.

The two wings of the house were then separated and lifted onto two low-loaders, which trundled through the night, through the centre of Hobart in the small wee hours, until they reached our plot in Kingston in the early morning.

Now it was just a matter of lifting the two wings onto the pre-prepared pilings…

You can see from the photo that the front of the house isn’t fully clad. This is because there will be a connecting garage in front, but since that will be on a slab, and needs a driveway and crosswalk, it couldn’t be manufactured off site. We believe that this will be built next.

The water and sewage are already in place, and today we spoke to the electrical company about our new account. After that we just need to install the solar heating, the wood stove, the wooden flooring, the raised decks and stairs…

Substantially Commenced

In the Australian building industry, there is a key milestone where a project is deemed to be “Substantially Commenced”. This phrase occurs throughout the legal, contractual, and financial documentation, as well as in both Federal and local government policies. The term is, however, not explicitly defined, neither as a legal term nor in any building code.

In most jurisdictions, in the context of private housing, it is deemed to be the date at which the foundations have been laid. For most projects, which are built in situ from the ground up, it is the first time that the builder breaks ground and does something physical. In our case, because the house is being built off-site, the building was in fact almost complete before it had been “Substantially Commenced”.

Our “Substantially Commenced” date was Wednesday 28th October. On that day, our concrete piers had to have been installed on the land, otherwise we’d miss a load of contractual and financial milestones and generate a whole heap of extra paperwork and expense.

By Wednesday of the week before, we still didn’t have our Permit to Build. On Thursday, the entire planning department took a day off. On Friday, the planning department were back at work, but the only person authorised to sign our Permit to Build, had gone on holiday. On Monday, despite continual prodding by our builders, we heard no more from the department. On Tuesday, our builders sent a work crew for a site check, and discovered that the builders of the properties on either side of us have been using our property as a work site and dumping ground.

One of the clauses in our contract with the builder was that the site must be completely empty before they start work. We contacted the builders on either side, who both admitted liability, and promised to move their stuff immediately.

Late on Tuesday afternoon, only hours before the deadline, we received our Permit to Build.

On Wednesday, the work crew arrived on the property to put in the foundations, and found that (of course), neither of the neighbouring builders had done anything about their junk on our land. Thankfully, one of the crew took it upon themselves to push everything over the boundaries.

Because our project is a post-and-pier construction, which does not involve any excavation or poured concrete, the actual work of building the foundations went very quickly indeed.

Our foundations are now officially down, and we are Substantially Commenced!

Where is our Permit to Build?

It’s been a month since we received our Planning Permit from Kingborough Council, but sadly this didn’t give us the right to actually do anything. Possession of a Planning Permit merely confers upon us the right to apply for a Permit To Build. Until we receive that second document, we can’t even break ground on our land.

Time is ticking on, and Council is still sitting on our Permit to Build. Without that document, we not only can’t build, but we can’t get a loan. The bank are patiently sitting on our loan application, but we’ve already had to ‘refresh’ our loan paperwork once already, when the bank statements and so on that we’d provided went out of date. It is frustrating because we’re still making substantial payments to Get Things Done, and our cash reserves are dwindling. In addition, part of our contracted agreement is that the foundations must be “substantially completed” by early November, and it’s now late October and we can’t get them started.

If we’d been building in the traditional manner, on concrete foundations at our property, we’d now be up the proverbial creek, with no way of getting the build done in time. We are, after all, moving to Tasmania in December.

Luckily, the house is being built off-site as two separate wings in TasBuilt‘s factory, and we had enough cash to get them started with the framing and windows, so they forged right ahead and started building. The framing was done in a couple of days.

Despite the fact that we can’t pay the builders any more money until our loan goes through, their factory has its own timetable and they were keen to continue; a week later they’d installed the windows, electrics, and made a start on the insulation.

A week later, they’d made a start on the roof and cladding, and made good progress on the dry-walling.

Now that the builders have started, it seems that nothing can stop them. The house is due to be completed and moved to our property (on two low-loaders in the middle of the night) in a fortnight’s time. Before it arrives, the foundation posts need to be in place. These are scheduled to go in next Wednesday… and we’re still waiting for the Permit to Build.

The Dreaded Decor Sheet

Now that our plans had been submitted to the council, all we needed to do was open some champagne, sit back and wait for the build to start, right? Mmmmm no. Not at all. The builder introduced us to the Decor Sheet, a couple of dozen pages in which we needed to itemise in excruciating detail every inch of the exterior and interior of the house.

This was mind-bending stuff. We’d never before realised just how complex a system a house is. Every design decision influences other aspects of the design in ways that are hard to predict until you have gone down the path, and then wound back to try another route. Almost every evening, for months, we fired up the laptop and launched the current version of the Decor Sheet and talked our way through it, again and again, Googling our way through the unfamiliar terms. Did we want square set apertures, droppers, finials? And if so, why?

The first part of the Decor Sheet deals with the outside of the house; building materials, colours and so on. As time went on and we made firm decisions, we signed off first new version A, then version B of the original plans. We then realised that some of the decisions that we’d made about the exterior affected the interior, leading to version C, which raised questions about the roof, which led to version D, and so on.

The “exterior” part of the Decor Sheet needed to be signed off far ahead of the “interior” part, and although it was a bit stressful, we did manage to get it done. The next step was to deal with the “interior” pages, and at about this time, the wheels seemed to come off the builder’s bus. They were supposed to be helping us through the design process, but suddenly they weren’t responding to emails or answering calls. The only response we could get was that they were “very busy”, but that we still needed to complete the Decor Sheet by a specific date, otherwise we would “lose our place in the queue”.

The Colourist

We have no idea how to choose a colour scheme for a house, or how to design a kitchen or bathroom. I mean, why should we? Like anybody else, we know what we like, but how on earth were we suddenly supposed to become interior (or indeed exterior) designers? The builder had originally promised expert guidance, but that guidance was clearly not forthcoming.

For around a hundred dollars, we engaged a “Colourist” through the local paint shop. She was amazing! We had originally intended to talk to her about interior walls, but she got the bit between her teeth and revamped the exterior as well, with full and frank advice about the whys and wherefores of her decisions. We left the shop with an armful of colour chips and, for the first time, a warm fuzzy feeling that we were getting on top of things.

The Kitchen Designer

That warm fuzzy feeling persisted until we started on the kitchen. We already had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with the builder’s joiner, whose response to any request for advice about cabinet making was “We can build anything!”, which was hardly helpful. She had a particular penchant for making drawers and cupboards in unusual widths “to make them fit”, without any thought of how we might use them in real life.

With no practical advise forthcoming from that direction, we downloaded the kitchen design tool from Ikea and messed around with it. It’s a great tool, but we still didn’t feel that we were qualified to make our own decisions, so we made an appointment with an Ikea consultant. He came round to the house and at first was unwilling to provide actual advice beyond recommending products that fitted our specifications, but Bronwyn convinced him to think a bit more laterally and a few hours later, the two of them had thrashed out a rather nice design for both the kitchen and the pantry.

All of the cupboards and drawers were carefully designed to match standard-sized Ikea kitchen products, so that we would have no trouble finding inserts and trays for them. We did want the kitchen to be installed by the builder in their factory, rather than after-market by Ikea or anybody else, so we sent the finished design to the builder, who gave it to the joiner, who copied the basic design into his plan, but stretched all the cupboards out “to make them fit”…

We soon sorted out the joiner’s little game, and got the kitchen cabinet plans changed back to the way we’d designed them. However, the whole experience got us thinking about the limitations of having built-in wardrobes and cabinets. After all, if we wanted a wardrobe, we could get a free-standing one, and if we wanted to change the function of the room in the future, we could just move that wardrobe somewhere else. If everything was built-in, which was the builder’s default option, then we would lose that future flexibility.

OK then, we removed all the built-in wardrobes from the Decor Sheet.

Bathroom Design

For similar reasons, we decided to “Ikea-ise” the bathroom. We’d already decided on the floor and wall tiles, so now this meant also choosing our own bath, vanity units, sinks, taps, and other paraphernalia for each of the two bathrooms.

Some of the items were available from the builder’s own suppliers, so we let them deal with that. Others, such as some fancy tap ware, we purchased ourselves, and will freight directly to the factory. When it came to the bathroom furniture, Ikea Melbourne will deliver to Tasmania via the ferry, but we didn’t want the goods to arrive either too early (and lie around in the factory, potentially getting wet or damaged) or too late (thus delaying the build), so we rented a storage facility close to the factory and had them delivered there.

When the builder is ready to receive them, we’ll hire a local driver to pick the boxes up from storage and take them to the factory.

The Electrical Plan

There’s a part of the Decor Sheet that says “create an electrical plan”. Eh what? So not only are we required to be colourists and furniture designers, now we need to be electricians, too? Apparently.

We knew this was coming, and for months I had been trying to get a template from the builder, so that we had at least a vague idea of what kind of documentation we were supposed to provide. Eventually, after even more bugging and prodding, we received a snippet of somebody else’s Electrical Plan, and found that it was simply a plan view of the house, with all the lights, sockets, switches, data, and specialist power supplies marked.

Sure, we can do that! The power and data plans were reasonably easy; maximum power and data everywhere, to cater for every possible change of use for a room. No worries.

But when we turned to the lighting plan, we ended up once more going down the Google rabbit hole. How many downlights should we have per square metre? What’s the best way to arrange lights in a bathroom? And then, once I’d started drawing in the switches, I realised that you could easily get into a situation where you couldn’t comfortably turn the lights out on your way to bed, or turn them on if you entered through the back door at night, or what if you came out of the office at night and wanted something from the kitchen…?

It was mind-boggling, but I believe that I thought of everything.

Variations

As each change is made to the Decor Sheet, it affects the original quoted build price, which was based around a set of standard inclusions. These changes are supposed to be recorded in a document called a Variation; when we remove items from the plan, the price goes down, and when we add new ones, it goes up. At least, that is the theory, but the builder had stopped talking to us and we had no firm idea of where we stood financially. We knew that some of the early changes that we’d made, such as the Velux skylights, and moving the driveway from one side of the plot to the other, were large-ticket items, but we had still received no quote for them. Without knowing how much the build was going to cost, we were running into problems with financial planning.

It wasn’t just the money; we were trying to make important decisions, many of which required interaction with the builder, and it was as if they had just written us off. One night, after poring over the plans and figures and Decor Sheet once again, I got fed up with the whole thing, and emailed the builder to inform them that we were not moving forward with the build or paying them any more money until all of our outstanding questions were answered.

Early the next morning, the somewhat nervous and apologetic builder arranged a Zoom meeting, and shortly after that all the remaining issues had been addressed, including a properly itemised Variation. We spent a couple more evenings going through the dreaded Decor Sheet, checking it line by line, and then we signed it.

Sometimes it pays to be stroppy.

We submit the plans

We’ve been forced by the pandemic to put our plans for the forest on the back-burner, and instead to build a completely different house on a completely different plot. We now find ourselves under pressure to get the house finished so that we have somewhere to quarantine when/if we are allowed to relocate to Tasmania at the end of the year. At the time of writing, it isn’t clear how we’ll transit intervening Victoria, which is in a declared State of Disaster…

Putting those worries aside, we do need to crack on with our design. There is a tight deadline if we are to submit the plans in time for the builders to start ordering windows and other materiel, in time to get the prefabricated sections delivered to the site by the end of September. To this end, we have been having daily discussions with the builder and with various suppliers (fireplace, flooring, decking, solar heating) to try to get everybody on the same page before we submit the plans to Council.

Since everything is connected to everything else, we also needed to decide on the flooring and the tiles and various finishes up front, so that we have a good understanding of how they all work together; it would be disappointing, for instance, to find on the day that the top of the floor tiles (7mm thick) don’t line up with the top of the wooden flooring (14mm + underlay) and indeed the hearth of the fireplace. This entailed numerous trips to the tile shop, bathroom shop, kitchen shop…

Site Surveys

We had engaged a geotechnical engineer (Ian Newell at EAW Geo Services) to perform a soil survey even before our plot purchase was confirmed. We didn’t want any surprises about our foundation requirements, and thankfully we were graded H1 with stiff clay, which won’t give us any problems with a pier foundation.

Even though this is an urban block and not a bush block, we were also required by Tasmanian regulations to determine our Bush Fire Attack Level. We engaged another surveyor (Rebecca Green and Associates) who determined that we were “low risk”, something that we already knew but which needed to be backed up by a certificate as part of our planning application.

Bear in mind that, because of the current ban on interstate travel, we have never actually seen the block that we bought on the internet. One good thing about the Bush Fire Rating is that the surveyor must provide photographs of the surrounding vegetation in their report. Now we have access to current photographs! This gave us our first good view of the neighbouring blocks. We are a little surprised to find that nobody else had started building yet. Are we going to be the first?

Up on stilts

The plans were converging on a solution that fulfilled our requirements, but which didn’t blow our budget too badly. We were aware from Google Earth that there was a slight slope to the land, but since our house would be built on posts rather than on concrete foundations, we weren’t too bothered about it. Our previous plans for the property in Lymington had to deal with a much steeper slope, where we anticipated a deck standing over 3m above the terrain. For the Kingston house, we figured that there would be a drop of less than a metre from the lounge sliding doors to the garden, but we’d sort out some kind of step or low platform after the house was built. The engineers had made a similar assumption, roughing-in a few wooden steps on the design to make the doors accessible, but otherwise leaving them alone. When the rest of the design was largely complete, TasBuilt Homes sent a surveyor with a Dumpy to get accurate readings, and confirmed a fall of about a metre across the whole 30m length of the site.

At about the same time, we were having interesting discussions about the slope of the garage roof. There is a local ordinance that the house and garage have to be roofed with the same material, but the style of Colorbond that we preferred for the house roof requires at least a 5 degree slope for drainage. The garage had a 3 degree slope, and if we increased that to 5, and extended the roof over the front door as a porch as we intended, it would interfere with the opposite eave.

Our choices were either to cut the garage into the ground (which would result in a garage floor below ground level with all the associated drainage issues, and would necessitate a more in-depth geotechnical survey), or to lift the entire house by about 30cm. That was pretty much a no-brainer, but when the architect plugged the new figures into their drawings, they found that the rear of the building would be well over a metre off the ground, and – under current Tasmanian legislation – we would need some enormous balustraded stairways to conform to health and safety regulations. Our slim and minimalist design suddenly sprouted all kinds of ugly appurtenances which pretty much wiped out the entire garden.

In order to get rid of the stairs on our planning application, we needed to bring in the deck design a bit earlier than we had anticipated. After all, it’s just a budget, hey?

Thankfully, Bronwyn had already been talking to a local deck builder, and he was able to quickly come through with some specifications for the planning application. Our main deck, which was originally going to be a low platform along the side of the house (so low that it didn’t need planning permission), was now up on significant stilts, which meant that we’d also need a privacy screen. We also created a small back deck for our bedroom, so that we’ll be able to drink tea as the sun comes up.

It was time to lay down our first serious payment, tens of thousands of dollars, to the builders. They are now submitting the plans to the Council.

Fingers crossed!

Plan B for Tasmania

Our off-grid house-build in Tasmania has come to a complete standstill, following the builder’s surprise cancellation of the project, and the closure of State borders during the covid-19 pandemic. Dan’s digger – which has been chugging away all this time, clearing and levelling the site – burnt out a track motor, and importing spare parts has become problematic. We can’t get to the site to complete the clearance ourselves or to oversee any decisions due to quarantine regulations, and anyway the importation of building materials for the house, not to mention electronics for the solar array, has become all but impossible.

Our daughter starts school in Tasmania in 2021, and the contract in our current AirBnB in Canberra expires before Christmas 2020. We really need to sort out a Plan B.

We did some Zoom tours of houses for sale down in Kingston, which is on the outskirts of Hobart and close to the school, but noticed when the property agent panned around the neighbourhood that there were still some empty plots available. That got us thinking.

We had already formed a good working relationship with TasBuilt Homes, who had designed us a nice house which they were going to build in their factory and then bring in pieces to assemble on the land. Unfortunately, their surveyor decided that the approach road was too steep for their low-loaders to negotiate, and we moved on to other plans.

What if we bought a simple urban plot with access to town electricity and gas, and got TasBuilt Homes to put their house there instead? That would tide us over for a few years and enable us to get settled in Tasmania before once more addressing the off-grid build.

And so it came to pass that, three days ago, we became the proud owners of Lot 319 on the Spring Farm Road project in Kingston, Tasmania.

While the conveyancing was going through, we spent several weeks drafting the design of the house that we’ll put on it. This weekend, we’re signing a contract with TasBuilt Homes to start working on the full design.

It probably won’t be finished in time for Christmas, but we do still own our wonderful forest, inside which is an area that has now been at least partially levelled. To that end, we have purchased a new tent in which we can live (and, if necessary, quarantine) until the Kingston build is complete.

It looks like a plan is finally coming together!

Shall we build a bespoke house?

Having exhausted the possibilities of round houses and prefabricated houses, it was back to the drawing board once again. We had been trying to make the project easier for ourselves by getting major parts prefabricated and delivered, because we were working interstate and would not have daily oversight of the construction. One obvious solution was to move to Tasmania and personally supervise the build, but we had temporarily lucrative work in faraway Canberra which we still needed if we were to complete the project. Perhaps it was time to stop trying to make things easy, and get somebody to build a bespoke house for us on site?

We initially approached Davies Construction, who were happy to build something that resembled our previous designs, and provided some reasonable-looking cost estimates. We were feeling quietly confident when they backed out at the last minute, saying that they had just completed a build across the river in Franklin, and found that the travel distance of their sub-contractors was too onerous. I suspect that in reality our project was too small to be of interest to them.

Then we started discussions with the amazing David Kapel, a build manager in Launceston. David was excited by our project from the beginning, and took all of my carefully assembled quotes and estimates and agreed that he could meet almost all of them himself. He would handle our entire build, including all sub-contractors, from breaking the ground to the final finish, including electrical and plumbing work, for a reasonable price.

The way that he was able to achieve this was because the main structure of the house would be made from baulks of cedar, imported already cut and shaped to the owner’s specification by the Scandinavian company YZY Kit Homes. YZY had an agent close to our house in Canberra, who was happy to show us around some demonstration houses.

Being made of thick timber, these houses are sturdy with excellent thermal insulation, and the parts are easily transported. We were shown a house like the one above, broken down into components and ready to be packed into a standard shipping container which would easily fit down our road.

Nothing was too much trouble for David, and he even agreed to a fixed-price contract because he was interested in having a show home in the south of Tasmania. We met him on site and discussed access, and we discussed turning circles and trees that needed to be removed, and the levelling of a space on which a 40-foot shipping container could safely be offloaded using a side-crane.

Over the months, we worked out interior decoration, decking materials, and different methods of achieving (and in fact exceeding) our required Bush Fire Rating.

We moved forward with grading our access road, and I got busy with the chainsaw to clear the building site. We put our property in Montevideo up for sale to free up some cash, and got down to the final fiddling details of the placement of light switches and power sockets. We were onto a winner.

Then disaster struck. Due to a family emergency, David had to pull out of the project and shut down his construction company. We were devastated.

YZY were still happy to supply the kit, but did not have any other licensed builders in Tasmania. Still in shock, shattered and not a little depressed, we drew a line under the whole idea of house-building, and went to look at yachts instead.

It took a little while to work it out of our system, and we looked at a lot of yachts. In the end, though, we couldn’t really find what we wanted for the amount of spare cash in our pockets, so we returned home to sulk.

Then we heard once more from David; his son, whom we had already met, was interested in taking up the reins of the family business. We slowly restarted our negotiations, and were just in the process of pricing up a second design option, when COVID-19 became a worldwide pandemic. Transport prices from Scandinavia went through the roof, as all the world’s empty shipping containers ended up rusting in China awaiting cargoes that never arrived. The Australian dollar went into free fall, and the supply chains of imported building materials broke down. Tasmania closed its borders to non-essential visitors.

We hope and trust that we will all get through this, but until the crisis is over, that’s the end of our story.

Bulldozing a Road

Back in 2012, we asked Matthew, a friend and neighbour who had access to useful machinery, if he would help us with bulldozing a road into our property. We asked him to make it as subtle as possible, just a winding bush-track through the forest to give us initial access, without materially changing the look and feel of the site. Matthew made us just what we wanted, a dirt track just perfect for humping camping gear in and out of the forest.

I had an idea in the back of my mind that some day we’d need to widen it to give access to construction machinery and to serve as our official Rural Fire Service access road, but for now this would do us just fine.

Since the “official” council road, Klynes Road, was merely a dotted line on a map rather than an actual graded thoroughfare, we also got Matthew to clear a line along its path up as far as our track entrance, adding a turning circle for delivery trucks, for when the time finally came to build something. Nobody else uses that end of Klynes Road, as it doesn’t go anywhere, so we felt that nobody would mind.

Then we went travelling abroad for a number of years, and returned with a small child. This re-focussed our minds on the building project, which had heretofore been a nebulous plan that we would think about somewhere in the future.

The first step was to evaluate what had happened to our property in the intervening six years. Was the access track still open? Was the cleared building site still accessible? We hopped on a flight to Hobart and rented a small car with a child seat.

We had no idea what we might find, or even if we’d be able to find the track. Nature can reclaim a lot of land in six years! This video records our arrival.

The track was still there, overgrown with ferns in places, and obstructed by fallen branches and the occasional tree. We cleared it all away, but found that the compacted mud of the track bed had eroded in places to reveal a lumpy surface of loose sand, projecting tree roots and slippery stumps, and there was no chance of getting our two-wheel-drive rental vehicle up there. We did come across a flat hard-standing that had been built by a gate to our nearest neighbours’ property (the farm on the other side of Klynes Road), a gate which hadn’t even been there six years ago. Now that we’d extended Klynes Road as far as our boundary, there was no reason why our neighbours shouldn’t make use of it, and they clearly had. It made a useful place to park the car, while we unloaded.

Our storage shed, now six years old, was still standing on firm foundations, with all of our camping gear refreshingly un-nibbled by the local wildlife. After moving out the bulkiest items, we used the shed as a rain shelter for cooking and eating. Berrima, age 3, instantly fell in love with the forest, and with the whole idea of bush camping.

I had been worried that we would need to have the building site itself cleared again, but in fact it looked much the same as we’d left it six years earlier. I had deliberately left the tall trees standing while clearing away the scrub and litter, and I guess that’s the advantage of dry sclerophyll forest; all of nature’s action is far up in the tree canopy, and nothing much happens on the ground. There was just some Common Heath, a pretty but slightly prickly flowering native, and some bracken under the sheltering native cherry trees.

Having established that everything was fine with our forest, we went back to work. A year went by, while we worked on contracts far away in Queensland and in the Australian Capital Territory. In the evenings, though, we planned and plotted ways to fund and build our final home.

Doing our research and due diligence, I became aware that the Rural Fire Service regulations had changed. When we’d put in our original access track, the requirement had been a maximum slope of 1 in 4; now the legislation had been upgraded to no steeper than 1 in 5.5 and at least 4 metres wide. Before we would be permitted to live in any planned house, we needed to build a new road.

I commissioned a surveyor to provide us with a contour survey of the site and track. This confirmed that not only the track but also the final rise of Klynes Road was too steep, and the surveyor went back to research the slopes further downhill. Once this was done, I plugged his figures into a GIS program, and then spent several months trying to combine the often contradictory information from this and our previous surveys, mud-map sketches, and paper documentation, to form a coherent picture of our site.

Poring over the numbers, I mapped out a potential contour route for an access road that would meet fire regulations, would be strong and wide enough to take heavy construction vehicles, and yet wouldn’t spoil the feeling of arriving at a remote bush block. In the 2019 site plan to the right above, you can see the wide green road skirting the Easterly limit of the contour lines.

The map is, of course, not the territory. For all I knew, there might be stands of important trees that I would not want to see felled, or other surprises that could only be determined on the ground. Since I was still working far away in Canberra, I also needed to find somebody with the necessary equipment and experience to get the job done in my absence. I boarded a flight to Hobart.

As luck would have it, it was pouring with rain that weekend, although this had brought the Common Heath into bloom across the entire 14 acres, which was quite beautiful.

I had intended to camp on the land, but instead elected to stay in a local B&B that had the advantage of heating and the internet. My rental car, a tiny hatchback, was obviously never going to make it up our track, but I figured that I would load it up with surveying equipment, stop short on the final drop of Klynes Road down to our creek, and hump in my gear on foot. I was quite surprised to discover that our neighbours had, in the act of putting in a boundary fence, extended Klynes Road right past our property and up over the next hill.

I had a rare old time stomping around in the mud, translating my mapped intentions onto the ground, and finding that yes indeed there was a slightly better route through the timber, one which avoided felling some of the older trees. I spray-painted and marked the route, while wondering who I was going to find to do the actual work.

Back-tracking to our border with Klynes Road to check my figures against my boundary markers, I came across a large yellow digger parked on the fence-line of the farm on the other side.

Aha! I thought, and rang the neighbour whose fence this was, and before very long was in contact with the Dan, the Cat’s owner, who agreed that it made perfect sense for him to work on my project once he’d finished the fence-line, since his machinery was already on site.

Soon enough, the road-building project was under way. Perhaps ironically, the very first thing that Dan did was to widen and re-open the old track, so that he could get his digger up to the site. Now we are the proud owners of not one, but two roads.

Things quietened down a bit until after Christmas, when Berrima and I arrived at the end of a road trip to escape the 2019 bush fires. We had a good laugh “going on an expedition” (looking for and re-marking our boundary markers), setting up a tyre swing, and doing some bush artwork.

I also took the opportunity to finally clear the trees from the building site.

With actual physical labour and a changing skyline, it finally felt that I was achieving something. The site became brighter and sunnier, and the final shape of the view over the d’Entrecasteaux became more obvious. As well as Dan the digger, David the builder and Rodney the quarryman also visited, and we were able to point at things and make real decisions; it felt like we were making actual progress.

There is a bend at the bottom of the new road that is slightly too steep to drive up if the mud is wet. Even the Land Cruiser couldn’t get up in the rain.

Between Dan and Rodney and I, we formulated a plan. Dan would do some more levelling to straighten out the bend as much as possible, and then Rodney would drop a 1.5 tonnes of 60-100mm aggregate next to the creek. Dan would level it, and then Rodney would drop a second load. Once this had been bedded in up to the top of the bend, Rodney reckoned that the gravel trucks could negotiate the bend by themselves, and lay the rest of the 13 tonne loads themselves using the tipper and dragged chains.

Today, the first load went down, and the creek crossing looks marvellous.

Canberra to Launceston – Road trip to escape the bush fires

The smoke from this year’s early and severe bush fire season had been closing in on Canberra for the past month. Official figures showed that breathing the air was equivalent to smoking several packs of cigarettes every day, with the city regularly topping the index of “world’s most polluted cities”. The ongoing bush fires, which were showing no sides of abating, where being fanned by high winds and extreme temperatures.

Smoke masks were either unavailable or in limited supply, and in any case didn’t come in non-adult sizes, so it was definitely time to get the children out. Some families headed to the coast, others to Melbourne in the south. We’d already escaped to Vanuatu for a week, but were now back in town and conditions were getting worse. We decided to go and camp on our property in Southern Tasmania.

Bronwyn needed to stay in town to work, but Berrima and I were free to go. It would be an interesting experiment, because at four and a half years old, Berrima had finally given up a nightly slurp of mother’s milk, and we thought that she was ready for an extended trip with Papa alone. We loaded up the Land Cruiser with camping gear, and hit the road.

On previous family road trips, Berrima had needed constant attention and frequent breaks at roadside playgrounds. This time, she entertained herself by chatting about the scenery, embroidering, drawing, and using road signs to teach herself to read. It was all quite charming.

To make it more fun, we stopped every 1.5 hours or so, selecting highway exits at random and driving around to see if there was a playground or something else of interest. It turned every 3 hour segment into an enjoyable 5 hour exploration. 

Stopping for hot chocolate and curry at the Dog and Tuckerbox in Gundagai, we stepped out into 40 degrees of heat, passing trucks trailing rooster-tails of choking dust. We’d taken as wide a circuit as we could around the Snowy Mountain fires, but there was still a heavy smoke haze, with temporary signs along the Hume Highway warned of impending closures, and local fire signs set to Extreme.

One of our rest stops was in the typical rural town of Juglong, which had the advantage of a playground, but with the temperature still up in the forties, even Berrima couldn’t face playing in it for long. There was however a cute memorial sculpture to a policeman who was shot by a bush ranger (ie highwayman) in the late 1800s. 

We weren’t out of the smoke yet, though, by far. The plume from the bush fires burning all down the East coast and across Kosciuzco had reached South America and New Zealand, so our little detour inland to Yass and down the Hume Highway didn’t make a great deal of difference to the air quality. Passing Tarcutta, my eyes were streaming so badly that I could barely see to drive. Goodness only knows what it was like for the folks out defending their properties.

On our first night, we set up on the banks of Lake Hume. Usually we bush-camp, but most if not all of the national parks were closed because of the fire danger, so we ended up at the Great Aussie Holiday Park in Bowna. This did have the advantage of a children’s water park and a very welcome pool, but the disadvantage of being far from any grocery shops. It was late in the day, so we we braved the cafe.

It took the chef 40 minutes to cook a steak and nachos, during which time Berrima and I covered an increasingly eclectic range of conversational topics as we tried to ward off hungry crankiness, one of which was trying to guess why the table had so many cut marks in the surface. I could only hypothesise that somebody had cut pizza on it, which didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Then, when our food finally came, it arrived with metal cutlery but no crockery, just a soggy paper bag which decayed instantly, so that cutting into the steak swiftly revealed… the table surface. Hopefully it was fairly clean. 

Back at the car, we’d set up the awning to provide maximum shielding from the dozens of overly bright lights that seem to be de rigueur at every Australian camp site, and to take advantage of the wind coming off the lake.

This latter seemed like a good idea at the time, but the wind soon built up into 40kph gusts bringing with them searing convection-oven heat from the Kosciusco bush fires.

As the night drew on, a Southerly change brought a welcome freezing gale, followed by a thunderstorm and rain. We were awoken by an ecstatic dawn chorus, and the sight of clear blue skies for the first time in weeks.

Shuddering at the thought of breakfast at the cafe, we hit the road and continued South until we found a decent coffee shop in a sleepy roadside town.

As we crossed the border from New South Wales into Victoria, we drove out of the smoke from the out-of-control bush fires in Kosciuzco, and into the smoke from the out-of-control bush fires in Gippsland. We weren’t that surprised, as we had been hearing from friends who had escaped with their children to Melbourne, that the smoke there was little better than in Canberra.

Because we had a ferry to catch, we could only fit in a couple of stops along the way, but they did include the site of Ned Kelly’s last stand in Glenrowan (but no playground), and shark and chips in Benalla (ditto).

Without too much more ado, we arrived in Melbourne (not too smoky, as it transpired) and were efficiently embarked upon the Spirit of Tasmania II. We were early enough to enjoy an uncrowded dinner in the excellent restaurant, which is set up to showcase the best of Tasmanian produce, and then stood on deck to wave goodbye to the mainland before retiring to our cabin for the night.

The swell in the Bass Strait was a relatively reasonable 3-4 metres which rocked us gently to sleep.

Early in the morning, we were decanted into Devonport under clear smoke-free blue skies, and headed to Launceston for a well-deserved breakfast. The chair-lift at Cateract Gorge beckoned, followed by a dip in the pool, and then of course a straight five hours at the playground.

Where is Marius?

We’re leaving Vanuatu, we’re all packed, and we’ve pre-arranged for our driver Marius to pick us up from the dock. We weren’t staying on Vanuatu’s central island of Efate, site of the international airport, but on the neighbouring island of Erakor. At the end of our lovely holiday there, we took our leave of the staff and boarded the little outboard tinny to take us back across the lagoon. 

Oddly, Marius wasn’t waiting at the dock, and he wasn’t responding to text messages. Ten, fifteen minutes passed by, and still no Marius. Our time margin to the airport, originally quite relaxed for the short journey, was now looking a bit slim.

One of the resort employees pointed out a bus driver lounging on the dock, an islander who had rather comically bleached a ring of beard- and head-hair in a complete circle around his face. He agreed to take us to the airport (a Vanuatu bus is not unlike a taxi, except that anybody can hail it in transit and the route changes to suit). Just as we were loaded on, a boatload of Japanese tourists arrived at the dock from their lunch on Erakor, eager to return to their cruise ship. Our driver wandered down to the dock to see if they needed a lift, assuring us that it would only take a minute, but immediately became involved in a long and animated discussion as the minutes ticked by and we got later and later for our check-in. It looked like the tourists were only asking for directions, but it was at least another five minutes before they set off walking in the indicated direction and our driver returned to our bus. 

He didn’t make it far before they hailed him once more and he was embroiled in another arm-waving discussion, until finally they all climbed on board and, with a screech of tyres, we set off in a now fully loaded bus. 

“We’re late for our flight!” we pointed out. “Their stop is on the way”, he soothed. 

Of course, the cruise terminal was on the other side of the bay, and the clock ticked on as he decanted the Japanese ladies onto their gangplank, then burned rubber back up the road to the airport. 

We had originally intended to stop for cash to pay him, but now we were so late that the driver agreed to wait while we used the ATM at the airport instead. 

Leaving Bronwyn and Berrima to unload the luggage, I ran inside to find the ATMs. There were two of them. I put my card into the ANZ machine and it slowly began to ask it’s innumerable questions. What language, Bislama, French or English? Will you need a receipt? And then that stupid question that makes no sense at all, Which account do you want? The one attached to the card, you stupid machine. 
Eventually it got around to asking how much money I needed, and then rejected 2500 (the taxi fare) because it didn’t have 500 notes. Good grief. 3000. Whirr whirr connecting connecting… rejected. 

The tannoy started announcing, “Will Berrima Reading please report to the check-in desk?” Pretty impressive, her first tannoy announcement and only four years old.

I moved to the second machine, a local one which ground even more slowly though the same questions, before it too smugly announced… card rejected. 
Back to the first machine, with a different card.
“Last and final call for Berrima Reading, Bronwyn  Reading…”
Whirr… connecting… connecting… please take your cash!

I sprinted back to the taxi, pushed the notes into the window, abandoned my 500 change and ran for the check-in desk. 

Thankfully there was nobody else in the queue, and after pointing frantically up at the increasingly urgent tannoy speakers, we swiftly received our boarding cards, but then there was an intricate Vanuatu exit card to fill in for each of us… then customs… and then finally into the crowded departure lounge. 

There was only room for two planes on the tarmac. A much-delayed Auckland flight was announced, many people cheered, and the hall emptied. The few remaining travellers peered uncertainly at each other and at the sweating late arrivals; the plane was clearly going to be half empty. It was going to be an easy flight home. 

Erakor Island, Vanuatu

Stepping onto the Erakor Island jetty from the little outboard-powered ferry which we’d boarded on the main administrative island of Efate, we were greeted by a smiling islander in traditional dress blowing a conch shell. A somewhat cheesy start, perhaps, but our minimal luggage was whisked away to our cabin and only minutes later our four-year-old was swept up by a group of giggling children, and without further ado, they all vanished down the beach to catch starfish.

Bronwyn looked at each other over the fruity drinks that had materialised in our hands, squinted out across the blue of the reef lagoon, and relaxed. 

Erakor Island is less than a kilometre long and shaped like a lamb cutlet. It is unpopulated apart from the managers of the perhaps 30 cabins dotted around the perimeter, one of which was to be our home for the week.

The island is surrounded by a shallow lagoon packed with living coral. There is a large rack of kayaks and paddle-boards available for use, as well as an ample supply of snorkelling gear in all sizes, and almost every day we paddled out to see what was happening on the reef. Berrima took to snorkelling right away, and spent ages just gently paddling to and fro over the coral heads, watching the fish.  

The reason that we were on Vanuatu at all is down to the 2019 Australian bush fires. We had intended to have a quiet Christmas at our apartment in Canberra, but the city was smothered in thick choking smoke, so we caught the next plane out. Most of the guests in Vanuatu seemed to be Australian, and many of those that we met were unable to get home for Christmas because their home flights to Sydney were cancelled due to the bush fires. Most of them didn’t seem too distressed by their dilemma, and in any case, Santa noticed our predicament, and came to Erakor.

Apart from the resort buildings on Erakor Island, there are a few interesting historical artefacts. In one corner is a typical Samoan family grave, with a plaque stating that the first Samoan missionaries are there interred. There is also a ruined mission building from a later, British minister, and an adjoining open-air chapel (still in use for the occasional wedding). Next to the chapel are a couple of gravestones.

Three successive children had died before their 2nd year, followed five years later by their mother, but there was no grave for the missionary himself. We asked a local, and he shook his head and said that the children all died of malaria; it was prevalent then, although it has now been eradicated from Vanuatu following an extensive vaccination program by the Aussies and the Kiwis.
“But what about the Reverend Mackenzie? Why doesn’t he have a gravestone?” I asked.
Our Melanesian interlocutor chuckled broadly, “He was eaten”.

Next to the resort’s rack of modern plastic kayaks, sat a traditional dug-out outrigger canoe. I’ve always wanted to try one, and we’d seen a number of others in daily use around the lagoon, so I asked if I could borrow it. There was a certain amount of humming and hawing, and it emerged that while it was technically possible, we had to wait for the slack of the tide in case we had trouble controlling it, and they also needed to round up at least three husky gardeners to lift it down off the beach. I tentatively hefted one end of the hull, and couldn’t even lift it, so we settled down to wait.

Realising that we weren’t about to give up, a group of strong men hefted the craft down to the water, and Bronwyn and I climbed aboard to give it a spin around the lagoon.

For something that was so unwieldy on land, it was light enough in the water, and we paddled out to where Berrima was snorkelling and then up and down the reef, until we realised that quite a lot of water was seeping in through the trunk and we headed back to the shore.

Only two large men were available to lift it out of the water, and they fumbled it and smashed the outrigger. I suspect that none of the staff were too distressed that the vessel was now out of commission.

Exploring Éfaté with Marius

Our driver, Marius, quickly and simply explained how to get about on Éfaté, the central and capital island of Vanuatu. Any vehicle whose number plate starts with a T is a taxi. Any vehicle, however small, whose number plate starts with a B is a bus. Buses can be flagged down anywhere and will take you wherever you want to go, subject only to the interim destinations of anybody else who gets on. 

Through our hotel on Erakor Island, we had engaged Marius and his bus as part of a half-day package of tourist attractions, but he ended up driving us around all day once he discovered that we preferred slow travel to ticking tourist boxes. 

Rarru Rentapao

One stop was the Rarru waterfall on the Rentapao River, a small and rather pretty cascade of limestone falls deep inside cool rain forest. The highlight is the deep plunge pool at the top, with a series of platforms and rope swings from which you can dive or plummet into the fresh water below. 

Spotting our four-year-old, the staff watched us carefully at first, then relaxed as she hurled herself off the highest platform, plunged to the bottom of the rock pool, and surfaced laughing. 

Marius knew the standard itinerary of the cruise ship operations, and since there was a ship in port, he had carefully arranged the timing so that we had the place to ourselves. We dawdled, we swam, we chatted to the staff, we leapt from platforms and plummeted from swinging ropes. 

At one point, Bronwyn realised that her carved wooden wrist-band, a much-loved memento from Ngong Ping, was no longer on her wrist. Although the water was clear, we were looking for a carved dark brown wooden bracelet on a river-bed strewn with dark brown wood and leaves. Noticing our preoccupation, the staff rapidly came to our aid and had a fine time diving around and checking the numerous underwater nooks and crevices. We didn’t find it, but had a great time looking, and we were treated to a seriously expert display of underwater swimming.

Turtle Sanctuary

Marius had recommended that we leave the turtle sanctuary til later, but we were hungry and it boasted a lunch barbecue. This site was more of a full-on tourist experience, with a bustling queue for the barbecue buffet and guests milling around feeding fruit to the hawksbill turtles in the lagoon. 

It was all a bit crowded, but Marius gently suggested that we let the current gaggle of cruise ship tourists finish the rapidly depleting bucket of paw-paw, and let them disperse back to their coach, after which a new bucket of fruit would come out just for us. We amused ourselves by watching the turtles from a distance, and looking at the hatchlings in a couple of large stone tanks. Most of the turtles at the sanctuary are hatched on site from eggs dug up from the beach in order to improve their survival rate, and then released back into the wild when adult.

When it had all quieted down a little and the promised bucket of paw-paw had arrived, we had a nice quiet time feeding the hawksbills and scrubbing the algae off their backs with sand. They were very gentle and calm, not at all like the green turtle that chomped out a piece of my thumb in Samoa.

After a while, one of the guides gave Berrima a hunk of fruit, took her by the hand, and led her out into lagoon. Before long, they had located ‘Big Mama’, allegedly over 100 years old, and larger and considerably heavier than our daughter. The two oldest turtles have been with the sanctuary for some year, because however often they are released, they just keep coming back and are now a permanent feature. 

After a token amount of paw-paw bribery, Big Mama consented to allow Berrima to ride around the lagoon on her shell. 

After the excitement of being towed, Marius suggested that we move up to a private-looking fale at the top of the hill, which had views over the reef, a hammock for the site’s owner, and – amazingly – a child’s metal slide which had been uprooted and cemented into the sea wall. 

The slide was a little sluggish at first, but then the owner of the sanctuary came down from the fale and started throwing buckets of water to speed it up. Good fun. 

Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon is a great attraction for visitors and locals alike. It’s a sandy-bottomed gully that grades from fresh to salt water along its length, making for an interesting snorkel through many kinds of fish. Up on the surface, there are a myriad jumping platforms and swinging ropes; the locals were pulling off some amazing stunts, spinning off the ropes into perfectly executed dives, while we tourists had to make do with Tarzan yells and ungainly splashes. 

I snorkelled far up the channel, floating seed-pods rattling on my mask until I reached the sea, revelling in the calm and peace as the reef fish went about their quiet business, ignoring the antics of the lumbering primates above. It was a great end to the day, and a good round-up of the main active attractions of the island of Éfaté.

Shall we build a prefabricated house?

After considering some lovely (but ultimately impractical and over-expensive) round house options, we have realised that we need to pay less attention to the fluffy design tasks, and more attention to supply chain logistics and to the post-lock-up finishing and decorating. To this end, we decided to investigate a prefabricated house.

We started out looking at “tiny houses”, which are a bit of a fad at the moment. Technically a caravan in that they possess a wheeled chassis and are thus immune to building regulations, they are not meant to be towed around on a regular basis and are commonly installed as a granny flat in a suburban garden. A tiny house can be a marvel of interior design, and we found that we were familiar with many of the principles because it is similar to that found in yachts, where space is also at a premium.

Although tiny houses are very interesting, and a good way to create some extra living space in a confined area, they are relatively expensive per square metre because of the necessity to cram everything into a small footprint, and anyway we have plenty of space to spread out and no need to unnecessarily limit ourselves.

There are other styles of prefabricated house, that can give you a larger footprint. Around Australia, there are a number of businesses which will build a house for you in their factory, all the way to completely decorated with all utilities and appliances installed. The house is then cut into pre-defined segments and delivered to the site on a low-loader for re-assembly. The advantage is that the builder has complete control over all aspects of the build using their own staff, and can thus deliver significant economies of scale as well as an agreed price and timeline.

We chose to move forward with TasBuilt Homes after visiting their rather amazing factory in Launceston.

The way it works is that you take one of their standard designs, and then move around the internal walls and fittings until you have the result that you want. The guys at TasBuilt were very friendly and obliging, and we had an excellent set of discussions with them, specifying all the finishes and adding a North-facing deck. Since the price was all-in, there were going to be no surprises, and we were pretty happy with the plan.

All was going swimmingly well, until TasBuilt sent their surveyor down to look at our access road, which was then under construction. They approved of the road that we were building across our property, but were less happy about access down Klynes Road itself. TasBuilt’s surveyor judged that it was too narrow and too steep to negotiate with a 6 metre wide trailer.

Although this is officially a council road, we are not averse to running a bulldozer down it or cutting back some trees if we need to, because we are the last property on the road and it doesn’t go anywhere else. However, there were places where we would have had to double the width, which would entail substantial earthworks and the loss of some beautiful well-established trees, so we regretfully decided to return once again to the drawing board.

Shall we build a round house?

We had long been interested in the idea of building a yurt or round house in the woods, even travelling to Mongolia to stay in an original felt-walled ger.

These gers are designed to be stripped down, packed up and moved at regular intervals, stemming from the traditional nomadic lifestyle on the Steppes. With the breakdown of the USSR and their enforced “westernisation” of Mongolians, there is a resurgence in their use, particularly noticeable today in construction sites as the workers move from site to site.

There is quite a movement around the world to take the same easy-to-erect construction concept but with the view to building a more permanent structure. Some companies used modern fabrics, others made the walls from wood. In all cases, the result is a polygonal structure with a large open space inside.

Australian Roundhouses

We looked at a few different companies, several in the US where this sort of thing has been going on for some years, but eventually settled on Australian Roundhouses (formerly Goulburn Yurtworks) just outside of Canberra.

The team were enthusiastic about prefabricating the structural elements in New South Wales and driving them to Tasmania on a low-loader to erect them for us. We had an entertaining time discussing various options and layouts; the polygonal plan provides a fantastic airy openness inside, but does present problems when most of our modern furniture is designed to fit inside a square box. Still, everything seemed to be going pretty well with an 8-metre central round house surrounded by a ring of “annexes” to give extra space. The central roof cupola would provide natural light, and the full-height windows and raised exterior deck would give us unrivalled views across the d’Entrecasteaux Channel.

We edged ever closer to an agreement, and the builders got ever more excited about their upcoming Tasmanian “holiday”. Then we realised that we might have a problem with the 49 foundation posts on which the structure would stand. They would add appreciably to the weight of the trailer which needed to cross to Tasmania on the ferry, so I agreed to look into sourcing them locally. Since the site is sloping, with a drop of a few inches to the South and about 3 metres to the North, a half to a third of the posts would need to be longer than the standard length in which such poles usually come. The longer ones, up to perhaps 4 or 5 metres, would all be “special order” and priced accordingly…

And then we started factoring in all the extras that we would need once the main structure had been constructed. Dry-walling, plumbing, electrical, waste, all would have to be added after the builders had gone home. Even the rough estimates started to blow our budget. We needed to reconsider.

Neat House

Perhaps we could get away with a smaller round house for our living area, and combine it with a more traditional structure for the services? We looked into a company called Neat House who prefabricate buildings in Tasmania using local materials.

This would use fewer long foundation posts underneath the yurt, but now we would be dealing with house components from two separate suppliers, plus additional labour to glass-in the connecting corridor between them. It was all starting to get a bit complicated, so we went back to the drawing board.

I am an Owner-Builder

We had chosen a build site in the middle of our forest, and had at least made a start on putting in an access road and clearing some space. But what next? What kind of house did we want to live in, and who could we get to build it? Would it make sense to do it myself as an Owner Builder?

We knew that whatever we built, it would be off the grid and self-sufficient. Even though such structures are increasingly common in Tasmania, it seemed to us that it would be sufficiently non-standard that we wouldn’t find something off the shelf, and perhaps we would be best off managing the project ourselves. To this end, I began investigating the requirements to attain my “Owner Builder” qualifications, which would give me the legal ability to build my own house in Tasmania.

It turned out that there were two components to this; the “White Card” which is an industry standard health-and-safety qualification that is essential for working on any building site in Australia, and the “Owner Builder Certificate”, which is a specific course to prepare you for the job in hand.

White Card

An Australian White Card is a pre-requisite for any construction activity, and the terms and conditions vary between Australian States. Whichever card you get, though, it is valid in all other Australian States… and some States don’t allow online training… and you don’t need to reside in a State to apply for their card… and the Western Australia card is available online and differs from some others in that it does not have an expiry date. I couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t get the open-ended WA card, so I registered with EOT online training and got one.

The course was inexpensive and interesting, with a face-to-face component which involved videoing yourself giving answers to some of the longer questions which are reviewed by the trainers. There was also a slightly bizarre requirement to film yourself correctly wearing your Personal Protection Equipment, so I took the opportunity to kit my daughter out as well.

Owner-Builder

The Owner-Builder qualification is a bit more involved, but is also available inexpensively online. I took my course with ABE, and began a fascinating journey into the intricacies of controlling a building project. One theme that continued throughout the various modules was to think carefully about whether you were up for it; are you capable of managing your time, managing people, managing a budget? Is your family prepared to support you throughout the inevitable stress? Are you really prepared to give up so much of your time?

It really is a very good course, and at the end I felt a little nervous but at least mentally prepared for the challenges to come.

Where should we build our house?

Now that we had purchased our forest in Tasmania, we had a great camping destination (albeit one where all our gear needed to be packed in over the creek on foot), but where should we build our house?

Our first camp site
Our steeply sloping 2008 camp site. Note the staked retaining wall/ foot rest to stop us from rolling down the hill.

With 14 acres of dry sclerophyll forest to choose from, we spent several visits stomping about, clambering over fallen trees and poking at the ground, we slowly formed a more detailed mental picture of the terrain. The high Southern slopes are steep and rocky, and the low Northern slopes are steep and boggy. To the East, the land falls away steeply to one side. To the West lies the official route of Klynes Road, although in reality there is little more than a rough logging track which terminates at the creek crossing on our border. Still, it is the closest thing that we have to a demarcated border with the farm on that side, so we didn’t want to build in sight of it in case something changes there in the future.

In the end, we decided to put the house on a shelf of less steeply sloping land, more or less in the middle of the forest. After a lot of scrambling around and climbing trees, we ascertained that a raised deck would give us fine views across the d’Entrecasteaux estuary, over the tops of our lower forest. The higher wooded slopes to the South would protect us from storms rolling in from the Southern Ocean. Bravely, we hammered some stakes into the ground.

Where shall we put our house? How about right here? Staking it out in 2008.
How about right here? The site in 2008.

It was still only coloured sticks in a forest, with no access except on foot by crossing the creek at the bottom of the property. However, a neighbour who had built a house further down Klynes Road had access to a bulldozer, so we commissioned him to run a causeway over the creek, push through an access track, and clear the brush from the building site.

Where should we build our house? RIght here! The brush cleared in 2012.
The house is gonna be here! The brush cleared in 2012.

We’d asked him to leave the larger trees for the moment, but to clear anything that had fallen down. This had the unexpected benefit of providing us with chest-high stacks of drying fire wood which will probably last us for years.

Perched atop just one of our little piles of firewood
Perched atop just one of our little piles of firewood.

We have no immediate plans to start the house build; all that is far in the future. But now that we can get a four-wheel drive in to our cleared building site, we have a perfect camp retreat at the bottom of the world.

Where should we build our house? Our camp site in 2012.
Home away from home. Our considerably more comfortable camp site in 2012.
Making good use of the wood pile.
Making good use of the wood pile.

For several years, all of our camping gear had been stored under a bush, wrapped in a tarpaulin. On every visit, we found more holes in our tarp, and sometimes nibble-marks on the tools themselves. We decided to construct a more permanent shelter for our gear, and to this end bought a prefabricated garden shed and some railway sleepers.

Digging the foundations for the shed.
Digging the foundations for the shed. It’s nice firm clay down there.
A man and his shed
A man and his shed.

Beach bums in Fiji

Following a particularly stressful work contract, we felt in dire need of a rest. There are few better places to regain your soul than an island in the South Pacific, so we rented a beach hut in Fiji.

A beach bure in Fiji
A beach bure in Fiji

Yatule Beach Resort
Our little hut (bure) did not come cheap, but on our first morning we lay in bed and listened to the surf thundering outside, and began to feel the first vestiges of peace. Our window looked out across the bay to the fringing reef. As far as we could tell, we were the only guests in this little cluster of huts, but staff were already sweeping the famous Natadola Beach of flotsam from the night’s tide, ready for our first dip of the day.

A beach bure in Fiji
Start the day with a cold beer

Apart from a handful of bure, the Yatule Beach Resort has a simple bar and an even simpler restaurant, really just a cafe. After trying out a few of the local beers in the bar, I decided to try the local rum, Bounty, which had been recommended by our taxi driver as the best cure for my persistent cough. The suggested mixer was coke, but that just makes all rum taste the same, so I asked if they had any sugar cane syrup, a traditional mixer in many rum-producing countries. They didn’t, so Bronwyn suggested that coconut juice might be a nice compromise, but this threw the staff into consternation and they went into a huddle behind the bar. Finally after some close deliberation the waiter returned, all smiles, to say that rum and coconut juice was available, and would only be a moment.

Seconds later, the barman left the building at a run and returned, panga in hand, with a freshly dressed coconut the size of my head containing not only coconut juice but also ice, a straw, and enough rum to fell a camel.

The perfect beverage
The perfect rum mixer

The Intercontinental
A few hundred metres along Natadola beach is the Intercontinental, which bills itself as “seven star”. We weren’t sure what that was supposed to mean, so we resolved to find out. On our first foray there one evening, we discovered that all the bars and restaurants had already closed. On the following evening we popped over a bit earlier to find both “cocktail happy hour” and “local cultural entertainment” in full swing. As usual, you’re never really certain how much genuine culture goes into these shows, but the participants were certainly having  fun and were keeping the Intercontinental guests enthralled.

For my part, I was more fascinated by the onlookers themselves. The Intercontinental has exorbitant room rates, and we were curious to see what kind of people stayed there. We’d dressed up a bit in case we needed to fit in with ball-gowns and tiaras, but instead found ourselves surrounded by English families in sports clothes and sun-dresses. Innumerable face-painted children were being chased around by cheerful hotel nannies, and seven-year old kids were running around recording the chaos laden with high-end camera equipment.

The staff were reasonably attentive but the cocktails were poorly thought out, and the wine menu was very interesting. At one end of the range they had Veuve Cliquot, and at the other they had Gossips, which is infamous in Australia for being the absolute cheapest red plonk that you can buy in a bottle, retailing for about $3. It is all but undrinkable, and was available at the Intercontinental for $30.

When the guests all vanished into the dining room, we briefly considered joining them, and then slipped back down the beach to our quiet little bar instead. We did however return on another occasion to try out the Intercontinental’s “fine dining” restaurant, which was quite the experience. All the ingredients were on spectacular display on a mound of ice, including some amazing striped rock-lobsters that we just had to sample, preceded by sashimi, sushi and bouillabaisse. The service was exemplary, the food wonderful, and the bill enormous, coming in at around $700 for the two of us.

The Natadole
In marked contrast, on another occasion we wandered over to a small hotel complex called The Natadole, comprising a small network of rooms interconnected by a series of walls and openings which promoted a gentle cooling breeze. We ate several excellent meals of similar quality to the Intercontinental but much cheaper and friendlier. The Natadole only has a handful of bure and they don’t accept guests under the age of 16, so it has a completely different ambience. In Fiji the food portion sizes are always rather small and the drink measures rather large, so the manager Tonga always sent us away reeling and happy.

Riding on Natadola beach
Riding on Natadola beach

Island Time
Slowly we began to unwind. It doesn’t take long in the South Pacific. Sitting in our bure after a gentle swim in the ocean and a leisurely breakfast of fried eggs, rice and papaya, washed down with coffee, we idly watched people work outside our verandah.

The hotel staff had dug an enormous hole in the sand above the tide line, and were emptying into it wheelbarrow-loads of littoral debris that had washed in overnight. Some really big stuff came in each day on the tide, and out in the water we also found ourselves sharing our swim with very large fish, possibly even some kind of tuna, as well as the occasional log or fallen tree.

I love watching people work
I love watching people work

Away from the beach
Obviously the whole Natadola beach area, while on the face of it beautiful and idyllic, is a managed environment for tourists. Chatting to the staff at various resorts, we’d found that they all live in a village at the end of the beach, so we set out to have a look. This entailed following an old railway line through the woods and over into the next bay, accompanied by cheerful staff commuting between shifts, and a large number of goats.

Walking to work
201107 2 Fiji 39
 

Eventually we arrived at the village
Eventually we arrived at the village

We finally arrived at the village, which consisted of simple buildings built largely from corrugated iron, most with a single fluorescent tube lighting the doorway. Kids and chickens played in the dust, and adults on well-groomed horses peddled optimistically for rides while elders sat in the shade, selling piles of oranges.

At first we couldn’t understand why, even here, there was a fledgling tourist industry. Surely not too many tourists came through this way? All became clear when we emerged from the other side of the village and onto the Natadola Bay golf course, the local attraction which the Intercontinental was built to service. We had passed an old sugar-cane train parked on the tracks, perhaps in other seasons it runs to the village and guests can then walk or ride to the golf course.

Sugar cane train
Sugar cane train

Out on the first tee, a smart security guard in a booth politely but firmly asked where we were going and where we were staying. He then waved us cheerfully through, but we ran into these guards everywhere, apparently ringing the entire beach and golf course. Ostensibly they were there to protect the guests from theft, but I suspect that they were really intended to prevent locals from using the facilities (perhaps unless they looked sufficiently colourful). At any rate, nobody was playing golf that day, so we had the place to ourselves.

Hole in one
The Natadola Bay golf course

Somebody had left a sculpture of me on the beach
Somebody had left a sculpture of me on the fairway

St Arnaud, the town with no beer

On a random motorcycle camping perambulation around the Australian state of Victoria, we noticed the town of St Arnaud on the map. Years before, we used to drink a very nice wheat beer called St Cloud from the St Arnou Brewery, so on a whim and on the barest similarity of names we decided to make that our next stop.

A rest-stop in the Victorian Grampians
A rest-stop in the Victorian Grampians

On arrival, the town showed great promise, with sturdy gold-rush era buildings lining a prosperous-looking high street, including three large hotels. Wonder of wonders, there was even a camp site in the centre of town nestled up against the race track.

The camp site managers didn’t know of any brewery, which didn’t greatly surprise us as there was no real reason to think that St Arnaud was any relation to St Arnou, but they vaguely suggested that we might try the sports club up the hill. Sports clubs are not renowned for their real ale, so after quickly pitching camp we ignored their advice and headed for the town centre.

The town was strangely quiet, in fact we seemed to be the only living things apart from the locusts. Maybe everybody was already at the pub? We headed for the nearest one, which proved to be not only closed, but apparently closed down. Still, with the impressive Commonwealth Hotel only a few metres away, competition was presumably fierce. Arriving at the door of the Commonwealth, we found a sign saying ‘premises for lease’. We back-tracked to the third pub, but this too was closed and boarded up from the inside. We looked up and down the empty street. Where was everybody?

St Arnaud
St Arnaud

We ambled back to the camp site, and recalled the sports bar ‘up the hill’. The indicated trail took us to a harness-racing track, nicely maintained with a central cricket oval, but devoid of life apart from a couple of kids in the distance playing in the nets. On the other side of the track was a building that looked very much like a bar, but it was still as a grave. Nevertheless, we thought that we could see the edge of a parked car sticking out from behind it, so we began to make our way around the race course. The air was full of locusts, and snakes slithered into the undergrowth from the rotting advertising panels underfoot.

We made it round unscathed, and were heartened to find an open door with a registration book for out-of-state visitors, a sight familiar in any of the innumerable gambling-funded drinking clubs across the continent. Signing ourselves in, we made our way past the usual sad array of motionless relicts that are always to be found slumped in front of the slot machines, and found the bar. It was, predictably, empty, and did not serve any ale. There was however a barman and a wine list, so we ordered a bottle and sat by the window. We felt that the sun had already well and truly set on St Arnou, but we sat and watched it go down once again.

Since we were the only customers, we got a fair bit of attention from the barman. Can I get you some food? Some more wine? Some more water? A toasted sandwich? However, he didn’t know anything about a town brewery.

When, suitably sozzled, we finally left to stroll back to the camp site, the barman rather bizarrely warned us not to cross the oval or we’d get “attacked by kangaroos”, and could he call us a taxi? When we reminded him that we were naturalised Australians and that killer kangaroos were quite low on our worry list, he meekly led us to the steps down to the oval and bade us good night.

(For the record, the real St Arnou is 1000 km away in the Hunter Valley)

Crossing the Nullarbor

We had been warned about the dragonflies, and here they were, swarms of them coming out of the desert, big fat and very very hard. Every time we stopped, enormous black crows would descend and pluck the mangled and juicy bodies from the motorbike.

We were riding across the Nullarbor Plain, the world’s largest single piece of limestone, comprising about 200,000 square kilometres of desert separating Western Australia from Southern Australia. There is only one road across, and the thousand-kilometre Eyre Highway has become a long-distance traveller’s icon. The story goes that, far from being the aboriginal name that you might expect, the word Nullarbor was coined by early explorers from the schoolboy Latin for ‘no trees’. This is something of a misnomer, because in fact this area forms part of the largest temperate forest in the world. It is a land of stark contrasts; red earth, bright green low-lying shrubs, and impressive glossy red gum trees, all stretching out forever beneath a vivid blue sky.

Look, no trees!
Look, no trees!

The logistics of living in such an arid environment preclude any kind of town on the Plain itself. There are a few hardy cattle stations out there, but along the road civilisation is represented by roadhouses strung out at intervals of 200 kilometres. Largely owned and operated by the major oil companies, they provide fuel for traffic and road trains and offer varying degrees of accommodation, food and camping.

Some are prosperous and well-appointed, others run down and a little squalid, but since 200 kilometres represents the maximum distance that the XJR 1300 can go on a single tank of fuel, we were obliged to stop at each and every one.

No trees here, either
No trees here, either

Although it was winter and there was a fresh wind blowing in from the Southern Ocean, there was still an appreciable heat haze on the road. Mirages and inversion layers were common, and it was often quite a few miles before you could figure out what it was that was coming towards you, or even if it was coming towards you at all. The prettiest mirage turned the whole of the road ahead into a perfect reflection of the blue sky overhead, so that it seemed that at any moment you might drop off the edge of the world.

All trailers are restricted by law to 100 km/h, and since just about everything from the road trains down to the smallest car and even some of the motorbikes are towing trailers, this means that the traffic, if you can call it that, moves at that same speed like discrete beads along a wire. Horizon to horizon, you might see one bead up ahead, and possibly one far behind, but that’s as congested as it gets. Going a little faster than this, we would slowly catch and pass each road train, but it was sometimes a long battle through the vortex of turbulence that could extend hundreds of metres behind each rig.

Road Train
Road Train

It is a point of pride for every Australian town, municipality or region to claim to be home to the largest, longest or oldest feature of Australia or, preferably, the world. If a particular region lacks any suitable natural features, then the locals will build something. Typical examples are The Big Trout, The Big Merino and The Big Banana. We have personally drunk beers in at least half a dozen Oldest Continually Licensed Premises In Australia.

The Nullarbor boasts not only The Longest Stretch of Straight Road in Australia (146.6 km) but also The Longest Golf Course in the World, which puzzled us a bit at first. All became clear when we realised that there was a tee and a hole at every roadhouse. The whole thing could be said to stretch out over more than 1100 km, but you have to drive for several hours down the highway to get to each tee. Of course there isn’t much in the way of green; the terrain is described as ‘natural ground’.

The plain viewed from a high scarp
The plain viewed from a high scarp

Along the road, the landscape remained largely flat but the flora changed regularly, presumably reflecting changes in the underlying hydrology. The underbrush remained hummocky and rarely exceeded a couple of feet in height, but the amount of bare earth between the bushes varied, and trees came and went above. In several places we passed entire forests of dead trees where presumably the water table had dropped temporarily out of reach. In most of these, new growth was now springing up from the bases of the trunks, so presumably the aquifer had since recovered.

The lack of water was a constant theme. With only a few inches of rainfall a year, most water is trucked in to the roadhouses at great expense. Showers are available at a price, but unless you rent a cabin you are expected to bring your own washing and drinking water with you.

Sign of the times
Sign of the times

A couple of days into the Nullarbor, we came across a road train parked in the bush and a hired motor home lying on its side. We stopped to see if we could help, but the road train driver, who had seen the accident and was now watching over the wreck, said that the occupants were fine and had got a lift out to the next roadhouse. On our arrival we heard that they had encountered a road train coming in the opposite direction on the wrong side of the road, and had lost control in their panic. We still don’t know how the roadhouse manager got it back on its four wheels, but evidently he did because it later drove in to the roadhouse car park with surprisingly little damage beyond some chamfered bodywork and busted windows.

They were lucky. You definitely don’t want to run into a fifty-metre road train.

Toy motorcycle
Toy motorcycle

There are warning signs along the road for all manner of creatures, from camels to cows and kangaroos to ostriches. I suspect that many of these signs are just there to please the tourists, because for the most part the wildlife sticks to the safety of the scrub, but we did encounter a pair of emus that had come up to scrape dew from the tarmac. Seeing them in their native habitat, we realised that their hummocky bodies blended perfectly with the scrub, and it was perfectly possible to miss seeing a couple of metre-high birds if they were standing still.

On another stretch of road, I noticed a fallen log and pulled out to avoid it, and then had to swerve again because it was in fact a very large snake crossing the road and spanning almost the entire lane. I managed to avoid it, and I hope it got across before the next road train came through.

Large black crows picked up bugs that had been squashed by passing traffic, or clustered around the occasional road kill. Where there was a fallen roo, the feasting birds would usually see us coming from miles away and would take to the air well in advance, but on one occasion the birds seemed reluctant to leave. As we got closer, we realised that this time they weren’t crows, but instead a whole family of wedge-tailed eagles. As they struggled to get airborne, one of them revealed a wingspan wider than the fully loaded bike. We later heard tell of a motorcyclist who was showing off a long scar in the top of his helmet from the claws of an eagle that hadn’t quite got enough altitude in time.

A dingo ate my sandwich
A dingo ate my sandwich

As we travelled further into the region, the cost of a room for the night rose dramatically. At Caiguna they wanted over $100 for a bed, but only $15 to use their camp ground (aka the open desert behind the rainwater tanks) so we set up the tent instead. We didn’t have sleeping bags, just a sheet and some felt blankets, and as luck would have it a cold front came through and the temperature dropped to three degrees, so it was bit chilly. Mind you, the stars were incredible.

The half-way point at Eucla
The half-way point at Eucla

After a few days, the roadhouses tended to blend together in our minds. Each had a pretty decent menu made up of frozen ingredients, jokey signs about tourists’ stupid questions, an endless supply of ‘I crossed the Nullarbor’ mugs, stickers and tea-towels, and – importantly – a well-stocked bar.

The cabins and camp sites were popular but we never had problems finding space. Once we’d watched the sunset there wasn’t much to do in the evening apart from go to the bar, and although we attended religiously every evening we were often surprised to find ourselves the only patrons. Most of the other travellers (road train drivers, grey nomads, the occasional motorcyclist) preferred to keep themselves to themselves.

A typical Nullarbor roadhouse
A typical Nullarbor roadhouse

We did get to talk to a few fellow-travellers. The road train drivers were working in shifts and trying to stay awake, moving goods and produce westwards and, usually, empty trailers eastwards. Sometimes they stacked the empty trailers up one on top of the other to save on tyre wear, and one driver explained how it was done. Apparently they back the first trailer up to a ramp, then reverse the second trailer up the ramp and on to first. Since they’re backing up a ramp, they can’t really see what they’re doing, and since all the trailers are the same size, there is zero tolerance for mistakes. Sometimes they miss and it falls off. We also heard about the fun they have moving mining machinery, because these stupendous machines are usually much wider than the low-loader trailer, with half of each tyre or track overhanging each side. Often the machine operator refuses to risk driving onto such a thin platform, and then it is up to the rig driver to fire up the unfamiliar million-dollar machine and ease it onto the trailer himself. Sometimes these fall off too.

The grey nomads were typically towing their caravans to warmer latitudes for the winter, and everybody else seemed to be driving Perth to Sydney as a sort of endurance feat; it is after all the complete width of the continent, passing through some of the most spectacular scenery in the country. We had passed a couple of lads on the road who were towing hand-carts on foot, but unfortunately there was no safe place to pull over for a chat. We did get to speak to a young student on a bicycle who said that he’d met them on the road and was a little jealous about how much food they were carrying, although apparently they were on a very tight budget and weren’t sure if they could afford to continue all the way to Sydney. The cyclist, a very pleasant chap, had decided to cycle across the continent on a whim.

Are we lost yet?
Are we lost yet?

The eastern stretch of the Eyre Highway runs along the cliff tops overlooking the Great Australian Bight. It was dusk when we passed the famous Bunda Cliffs, and the caravans were starting to circle and to jostle for prime sea-views. They always do this, but we could never figure out why, because they then seem to spend the rest of the night watching satellite television. We have considered doing a Grey Nomad trip ourselves (sort of a Brunette Nomad), and have even gone so far as to go to van shows and talk to caravan dealers. It had seemed to us that a caravan was very much like a yacht, and since we’d had such a ball sailing and meeting travelling yachties, we were keen to try the same thing on land. One of the great things about sailing in remote parts is that no matter how eccentric your fellow traveller, and whatever their walk or stage of life, they are almost always intelligent and interesting and, even if only for one evening, good company. Having attempted to similarly engage the caravanners on our travels, we had to admit that, by and large and with occasional exceptions, they were largely… not.

Bunda Cliffs at dusk
Bunda Cliffs at dusk

For the last day of our trip across the desert, incredibly, it rained. The roadhouses were full of celebrating station hands,
“How much did you get up at Kickatinalong?”
“Almost an inch!”
“Ah, good on yer mate. We had nearly half an inch at Dustbowlcreek.”

The road trains kicked up a heck of a spray, which made it essential to get past them but impossible to see if anything was coming the other way. Luckily the road train drivers are very aware of bikes – many are bikers themselves – and were very good about signalling when the road ahead was clear. We just kept the throttle open until we arrived at the quarantine checkpoint at Ceduna, officially the end of the Nullarbor and the start of the Eyre Peninsula.

The quarantine officer eyed our luggage and bright waterproofs with a jaundiced eye.
“Got any fruit?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, “no food at all”.
He stared broodily at Bronwyn, as if he suspected her of smuggling grapefruit under her jacket, then grudgingly nodded.
“Right, move along.”
We had crossed the Nullarbor.

Road warriors?
Road warriors?

A night in Norseman

The bush toward Kambalda is starkly beautiful, with the bright red of the soil contrasting with the luxurious and brilliant greens of the gum trees, low-growing scrub, and ground-hugging succulents. Whatever its size, each plant is surrounded by a circle of bare earth representing the area from which it is sucking precious water. No competing plant can gain a foothold inside this zone.

Red earth, green plants
Red earth, green plants

The land is largely flat and often salty, broken only by the small hummocks of laterite gossans, interesting geological features that form after iron is leached from the soil, forming a hard protective cap that prevents the underlying rock from being eroded away over the millennia.

Laterite cap near Kambada: Prosaically speaking, it's a naturally occurring heap of rusty iron.
Laterite cap near Kambada: Prosaically speaking, it’s a naturally occurring heap of rusty iron.

A little out of Kambalda there must have been a recent major change in the underlying hydrology, because for miles and miles all the trees had been reduced to bone-white sticks. I wondered if one of the many mines in this area had redirected some underground waterway into its workings, or if perhaps there had been a series of particularly dry seasons. Whatever the underlying cause, the water source seemed to have now returned, because a new layer of lush growth was springing from the base of each apparently dead tree trunk.

We will survive!
We will survive!

The road trains are longer out here; over fifty metres. If they’re coming toward you with a following wind, their bow wave can get quite uncomfortable. Nullarbor 27

Take care!
Take care!

We saw our first bit of road kill, but it was thoroughly tenderised and it wasn’t obvious what it had been. Certainly not a marsupial; maybe some kind of deer? Then we realised that there were feral goats grazing In the bush, some with horns as long as my arm. We also startled an escaped sheep, definitely of domestic vintage, but unusual in that it had retained a full tail, a very impressive sweeping arm with a fluffy pom-pom on the end.

The road goes ever on...
The road goes ever on…

The road went on, the earth became lighter in colour, but the signs to distant mines remained as prevalent as ever. We started to see what were apparently vast flats of soft mud, which ultimately joined together to form a feature called Cowan Lake which is mined for gypsum. I didn’t quite dare try to ride the motorcycle across the inviting flat surface, but clearly a number of cars had already been doing circle work and they hadn’t made much of a dent in the hard-baked clay pan.

Suddenly we were in Norseman, where a sign warned that it was 198 km to the next fuel stop (one full tank of fuel for us), and that water was scarce from now on so that we must be sure to fill up before continuing. I wanted to investigate an intermittent knocking from the bikes drive chain and there seemed to be plenty of motels to choose from, so we stopped for the night.

A motel in Norseman
A motel in Norseman

I quickly traced the knocking sound to the chain adjusters which had come loose. Fixing the problem meant loosening the rear wheel nut, and unfortunately some lazy mechanic seemed to have thrashed it on with a windy-gun instead of tightening it by hand. I hate it when they do that, as it makes roadside adjustments really difficult. Still, there were plenty of heavy rocks lying around, and by hitting it repeatedly I finally got it undone. We had booked in to the motel restaurant for dinner, and it was made quite clear that if we booked for seven, then weren’t expected to show up until seven. With an hour to kill we took a stroll around the town, which consisted mainly of a scattering of hundreds of small houses in various states of disrepair, all apparently servicing the Norseman gold mine.

The mine – and the town – have an interesting history, in that they were named after, and discovered by, a horse. The story goes that a prospector tied the horse to a tree by his brother’s tent for the night, and when he woke up he found that the horse was lame. Investigation revealed a large chunk of gold-bearing quartz lodged in Norseman’s hoof. The prospector and some friends got together and purchased the claim, and the town came into being on the site.

We wandered deeper into town, admiring the famous collection of galvanised iron camels built on the roundabout in the centre.

Galvo camels
Galvo camels

After a little more searching we finally located what seemed to be Norseman’s only pub, and met the locals. Both of them. One sat and drooled quietly onto the bar top, while another attempted repeatedly to engage us in conversation, which might have been interesting except that he had a habit of staring up into your eyes from close range, really foul breath, and a brain that seemed to be full of little more than whirring butterflies. Quickly finishing our beers, we scuttled back to the motel.

Since it was still too early for dinner, we decided to sit on the verandah of the restaurant and enjoy a pre-prandial bottle of wine. This suggestion caused great puzzlement to the waitress, who became fixated on the idea that we wanted to cancel our dinner reservation, but eventually we sorted it out and chose a bottle of elderly Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon that seemed oddly out of place in the otherwise standard selection of cheap table wines. The waitress struggled with the cork for a very long time, until I finally realised that she hadn’t even managed to get the point of the corkscrew into the wood, at which point I gently suggested that I give it a try. The bottle was thrust into my hands with alacrity, and I realised that all the others on the shelf were screw-caps. Possibly she had never before wielded a corkscrew in anger; I began to wonder just how long those bottles had been sitting there.

The wine turned out to be very good indeed, and we sat and chatted in the twilight until our food arrived. We hadn’t expected a great deal from the dinner, but even so we were still a bit surprised when my otherwise acceptable steak came with a big dollop of instant mash, and Bronwyn’s bruschetta came smothered in a slab of melted cheddar. Still, the wine was good and there was another bottle left, so I went and fetched it from behind the bar, snaffling the corkscrew on my way back to the table.

After dinner, we met Anne, our neighbour at the motel, who was travelling in the opposite direction to us. She had a bottle of white in her luggage, and we had a bottle of champagne in ours, so we got out some chairs and whiled away the rest of the evening on the verandah outside our cabins. We asked her what the road ahead of us held in store, and it turned out that her trip so far had been almost biblical, with plagues of mice, plagues of dragonflies, and a bushfire to contend with.

Out on the road next morning, we quickly found that Anne had been right about the dragonflies. Since they’re aquatic creatures, we weren’t entirely sure what they were doing out in the desert, but they slammed into the bike with dire regularity, to be picked off by cheeky crows whenever we stopped.

Have motorcycle, will travel
Have motorcycle, will travel

Norseman gold tailings
Norseman gold tailings

On the way out, we paused to gawk at the tailings heap from the still profitable gold mine, and then – watching out for flaming rodents – we rode on into the sunrise.

 

Golden Pipeline to Kalgoorlie

The Golden Pipeline
Living and working in Perth on the West coast of Australia, we had finally saved up enough money to get my motorbike shipped over from the East coast, where our good friend Elizabeth had been looking after it for over a year while we were off travelling. We were looking forward to using it to explore the remoter areas of our new home state.

The XJR’s arrival on the road train transporter exactly coincided with a lucrative job offer back on the East coast. We couldn’t bear the prospect of paying the road train to immediately take the bike back again, so we decided to ride East instead. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to get all the way to Brisbane before the start of our new contract, but we reckoned that in two weeks we could easily cross the famous Nullarbor Plain and get as far as Adelaide. We would then catch a plane for the short hop to Brisbane and ship the bike once again; prices from Adelaide to Brisbane are much lower than from Perth, because of the vast distances involved in crossing the Nullarbor.

We had intended to hit the road at lunchtime, but what with one thing and another (moving out of our Perth flat, cleaning it for the agent, shifting all our gear into storage, taking the removal van back to the hire shop) we didn’t get started until past three o’clock. Clearly it was going to be dark when we arrived at our first stop in the gold town of Kalgoorlie.

Loaded with camping gear and extra jerry cans of fuel and water, we began to make good time. Elizabeth had very kindly had the bike tuned before loading it onto the transporter in Sydney, and it was running very sweetly indeed. Although it had been years since our last motorcycle road trip, we quickly fell back into the old routine. With effectively only a single highway leading from Perth to Adelaide, we were in no danger of getting lost, but we did have to carefully plan our fuel stops. The big thirsty 1300cc engine sucked a lot of fuel, and so we could only go about 200 km on a tank, which broke the journey naturally into two-hour segments.

Ready to roll
Ready to roll

The Great Eastern Highway clambers up out of Perth and over the Darling Ranges before heading straight as an arrow across the Eastern Gold Fields to Kalgoorlie. Fuel was not a great problem on this first leg, with regular stops servicing road trains and commuting mine staff. Each petrol station doubled as a diner with varying degrees of home-cooked food. One might be a fish and chip shop, the next a traditional truckers diner, but the food was always good and the stops busy.

Once out of the Ranges, the terrain was completely flat, light woods giving way to unrelieved acres of grassland. The road was accompanied by two other man-made structures, the railway and the water pipeline. The Goldfields Pipeline is one of the engineering wonders of WA, running above ground for 530 kilometres and supplying precious water to Kalgoorlie and Boulder in the dry red interior. In the 1890s people in the burgeoning gold towns were dying from lack of water, and engineer C.Y. O’Connor spearheaded a campaign to build a pipeline from the coast. It was the longest pipeline project in the world, and needed a system of steam-driven pumping stations to force the water up over the intervening Darling Ranges. Although supported by the WA government, there was fierce opposition to what was regarded as an unfeasible waste of money. There is a story that on the the first test of the newly completed system, the engineer opened the taps, and… nothing happened. Mr O’Connor, exhausted from the stress, put a gun to his head and killed himself. The following day, the water completed its long journey and emerged from the pipe, and has been flowing ever since.

Pipeline and road trains
Pipeline and road trains

Most of the traffic in these parts consists of road trains, limited in length to 35 metres and 100 km/h and so are relatively easy to pass on the straight road, unless they are wide loads carrying mining machinery, in which case they take up most of the available space in both directions. These extra-large transporters are accompanied by groups of pilot vehicles which go ahead to warn oncoming traffic, and run interference from behind to prevent you from overtaking until the whole flotilla is ready.

Wide Load
Wide Load

There was a popular belief in Perth when we left that kangaroos were a big problem on this road at dusk, but we didn’t see a single road-kill corpse, so we took that with a large pinch of salt. We have lived in the Australian Capital Territory where the roadside can be lined with dead roos and wombats, and the stench of rotting bodies on a hot day can make you gag. The only living creature on this segment of the Great Eastern Highway was the occasional crow picking squashed bugs off the road.

As darkness fell, we ran into a swarm of bogon moths, big fat migratory insects that are regarded as a delicacy by some aboriginals. Caught in the headlights at 140 km/h, it is like heading into a swarm of soft bullets, swiftly covering your helmet visor in an impenetrable layer of sticky bug juice.

Kalgoorlie
The day before we arrived, an earthquake hit the Kalgoorlie-Boulder metropolitan area, destroying much of Boulder’s historical centre, so we were a little unsure what we would find in its twin borough of Kalgoorlie. However the town seemed unscathed and business was continuing as usual and we checked into the Youth Hostel without any problems.
Most of the cheap accommodation is to be found opposite the town’s three brothels, some of which are museums by day while plying their more traditional trade after nightfall.

Questa Casa, oldest brothel in Australia
Questa Casa, oldest brothel in Australia

From there it was but a short step to the Exchange Hotel, where negligee-glad “skimpies” served us very welcome pints of frosty beverage. The skimpies are a bit of an institution in Kalgoorlie, pretty girls shipped in from outside to pull pints wearing nothing more than a continually changing set of underwear, to the appreciation of the almost exclusively male mining population. For a while there was a bit of an arms race between the pubs, until all the wait staff were going topless, but since then it has apparently settled down a bit. The girls themselves are happy and congenial, although often not enormously competent at bar work. If you want something other than a pint of cold, it is often best to approach one of the regular, more conventionally clad bar staff.

There is a lovely but little-known balcony upstairs at the Exchange, which looks out on the whole town of Kalgoorlie, and from which you can watch the parade of punters milling around the other pubs in the centre.

The Exchange Hotel
The Exchange Hotel

Everybody in Kalgoorlie is small-town friendly, and we soon ended up drinking with a mixed crowd of wiry mine engineers, Maori bouncers, and Aboriginal ne’er do wells. The night degraded appropriately into the usual debauchery; the Aboriginals started fighting each other and were ejected, and the skimpies knocked off work and joined us in the Palace Hotel across the road. Somewhere in the melee, Bronwyn’s handbag disappeared, but our kindly new friends made sure that we were alright for beers.

Back at the hostel we realised that the code for the combination lock at the entrance was stamped on the fob of our room key, which was in Bronwyn’s bag. I wandered around the outside of the building and eventually located a loose window which I managed to jemmy open so at least we were able to get inside, but no amount of fossicking with my library card was going to get us through the impressive lock into our room. Luckily there were some sofas scattered about in the corridor, so we passed out on those instead.

The morning brought a spare key and rain. We had breakfast at the excellent Kaoss Cafe in the central St Barbara Square, where the chef prepares all those out-of-style English dishes that you had forgotten about: bubble and squeak, liver and onions, mince on toast, and a host of others.

Breakfast in St Barbara Square
Breakfast in St Barbara Square

We strolled gently around town, interspersed with coffee and cake in an attempt to clear the mental fug. The rock museum at the Western Australian School of Mines is exactly what a museum should be. No shiny plastic and multimedia presentations here. The cabinets are scarred wood and glass and a little dusty, the exhibits labelled by hand on cardboard squares containing either a detailed technical explanation, a single terse word, or nothing at all, depending on the whim of the curator at the time.

The collection houses a representative sample of every rock, mineral and gemstone found in the Eastern Goldfields, with special prominence given to the different forms of ore that are so crucial to the wealth of Western Australia. This is not a museum for idle onlookers, this is a serious tool for the fledgling geologist. Pride of place, of course, goes to the models of the biggest gold nuggets found in the early days of the gold rush, some a foot or so across and containing a thousand or more ounces of gold and silver.

Tossing up whether to stay another night or ride off in the rain, we eventually paid a last visit to the Exchange Hotel to see whether they’d found Bronwyns hand bag (they hadn’t), mounted the bike and headed east.

Bright Postie gear didn't stop the rain
Bright Postie gear didn’t stop the rain

Kalgoorlie Super-Pit
On the way out of town is the Kalgoorlie Superpit, another of those technological marvels that are scattered around a state used to doing things big. Historically, gold here was mined by individual lease-holders digging shafts with little more than dynamite and a shovel, and in the early twentieth century the landscape was littered with derricks and processing sheds. Eventually there came a point where it was uneconomic for a man and a spade to dig any deeper, and entrepreneur and con-man Alan Bond came up with a plan to buy up every single mining lease and then dig an enormous pit to extract every last ounce of gold.

Bond’s business failed, but the block of mining leases was taken up by another company, KCGM, who went ahead and dug the biggest gold mine in the world. The pit is truly enormous, and aircraft landing at Kalgoorlie-Boulder Airfield now have to detour around it because it creates a huge hole in the atmosphere above. We had originally bought tickets for a tour of the mine, but this had been cancelled because of the earthquake, and we had been told that even the public viewing gallery on the top of the spoil heaps had been closed for safety reasons.

Bronwyn finds a bigger shovel
Bronwyn finds a bigger shovel

As we rolled past in a light drizzle we noticed that the gate was now open, so we rode up the hill and took a look. The mine, usually buzzing with enormous machines crawling in the stupendous space like ants, was eerily quiet, so presumably they were still running tests; we’d heard that they were going to dynamite some possibly unsafe areas that afternoon, so maybe that’s why most of the machinery had been removed. Despite the quiet, it was still a really impressive hole in the ground. Here and there up the pit wall were tiny caverns, representing the tunnels dug by the original miners, now exposed as the superpit expands downwards and outwards.

KCGM Superpit, Kalgoorlie
KCGM Superpit, Kalgoorlie. Look out for the enormous mining machinery at the bottom.

Back on the Goldfields Highway, it was only 300 km to Norseman, gateway to the Nullarbor. We stopped about half way in the mining village of Kambalda, partially to refuel but mainly to get some sugar as I was still having some trouble concentrating through my hangover. Next to the petrol station was the mining village itself, a community of tiny cabanas for the use of shift workers at the mine. The cabanas themselves were extremely small, with probably only space to sleep and bathe, but the site was pin-neat and equipped with a pool and a bar.

Kambalda miner's accommodation
Kambalda miner’s accommodation

At about this time, I discovered that there was a message on my telephone, from Bronwyn’s mobile. The staff at the Exchange had found her hand bag, complete with wallet, phone and money, and had rung the most recently used number in an attempt to get hold of her. In fact the bag had not been stolen at all, but had been picked up by an overzealous bouncer while we were looking the other way. We turned around and headed back, picked up the hand bag and, reasoning that it was (a) late, (b) still raining and (c) we already had a room key, returned to the Youth Hostel for another night. The Nullarbor could wait one more day.

Hailstorm in Perth

Perth has been in a drought for the past five months, but the record was broken somewhat dramatically earlier this week, when we were hit by the worst storm in fifty years. The city centre was awash with rainwater and a hundred thousand businesses and homes lost power as winds of more than 120 km/h ravaged the city. Bronwyn was in the city when it hit, and watched as pieces of scaffolding were torn from a high-rise development. Judging that the train system would be inundated, she caught a bus, which turned out to be a lucky move. The emergency services had shut down most of the roads in the core because they were far too deeply flooded for normal traffic, but the rear-engined buses were big enough to get through, albeit by occasionally driving on the pavement. The police contacted the bus drivers by radio and told them not to let anybody off until they were well clear of the city. This was fine for Bronwyn but disturbing for some of the other passengers as they watched their flooded stops sail past in the wake.

In Australia it is fairly common that storms are accompanied by large hailstones. Down the eastern coast of the continent, hailstone damage to cars is so common that it is rarely remarked upon. Here on the west coast, though, its a bit of a rarity and this particular storm generated chunks of ice ranging in size from golf ball to cricket ball, smashing their way into houses through corrugated iron and tile, and destroying car windows and sun-roofs. The damaged houses, shops and cars then began to fill up with the torrential rain.

On the next morning I cycled to work before dawn as usual, and found the roads completely obscured by a blanket of branches, twigs and leaves ripped from the suburban trees.

Storm debris
Storm debris

Many of the trees, rooted in nothing but drought-dried sand, had given up the unequal battle completely and were lying embedded in the roofs of houses and across crushed cars.

There's a car under here
There’s a car under here

Most of the lights and traffic signals were out, and abandoned cars were scattered at the bottom of the steeper hills.

Passing acres of car dealers in the business district, I was amazed by the extent of the damage. On some lots, almost every windscreen was cracked, and none of the body-work would ever be the same again.

Cheap motor, sir?
Cheap motor, sir?

One car drove past looking as if somebody had attacked it with a ball hammer.

You dimple when you smile
You dimple when you smile

Once at work, I marvelled at the roof of our chill-out area, which resembled nothing more than a colander.

Not much protection from the elements
Not much protection from the elements

Out on my postal round, I found gardens littered with shattered roof tiles and glass. The glaziers were having a field day, simply moving up each street from one client to the next. Meanwhile the park rangers had arrived, equipped with chainsaws and cranes and chippers as they began the long task of extricating all the fallen trees without causing even more damage to the surrounding property. All around, the elderly and retired were doing their share, brushing the streets clear with brooms and, in more than one case, on hands and knees with a dustpan and brush.

Even the ants had changed their habits. When the rain hit, they must have scurried around looking for somewhere safe to put their queens and eggs, and most of them settled on the same brilliant idea; they’d move into the post boxes. Almost every brick box was teeming with insect life, usually emerging from a hole that they’d cut around the soft mortar where the house number had been formerly screwed in.

Give me a 'C'
Give me a ‘C’

As quickly as the rain came, it ran away, either pouring down the roads and paths and into the river, or sinking into the parched sand. Business quickly returned to usual, albeit amid scattered buckets and with the remaining unbroken windows and doors open to air the carpets. The cars, battered and missing windows and sun roofs, are driven stoically to work in the blazing sun. A fire-sale begins on the car lots. And in the heat of the new day, I fancy that I hear the sound of a million pens, writing to their insurance companies.

Pindimara costs

There is a saying in Australia that BOAT is an acronym for Bring Out Another Thousand, and it is spooky how often the answer to the question, “How much is that cool sailing gadget?” is “a thousand dollars”. It is also an oft-quoted statistic that the running costs of your pride and joy will be about 10% of the orginal purchase cost, per year, forever. In order to test this theory, we have kept detailed records of all our expenses, and found that, for the two of us living aboard Pindimara, it was closer to 15%.

For the benefit of others who are considering dipping a toe into the lifestyle, I have provided a breakdown of our expenses year by year. All prices are given in Australian Dollars. To convert to your own currency, you could use the Oanda converter.

Annual costs as a percentage of the original Purchase Price (172,900)

Total Expenditure 2005-2006 (Live aboard, not cruising) 14,206 08.2%
Total Expenditure 2006-2007 (Live aboard, not cruising) 27,402 15.8%
Total Expenditure 2007-2008 (Live aboard, not cruising) 17,021 10.0%
5 months Expenditure 2008-2009 (Live aboard, not cruising) 17,304 24.0%
6 months Expenditure 2008-2009 (Cruising) 13,186 15.3%
Average per year over four years 22,972 13.3%

 

Breakdown of costs

Preparations, not cruising 2005-2006

Fixtures and Fittings  
Duvet, pillows, glasses 200
Bedding, pots, pans 250
Kitchen equipment 100
Tools, kitchen equipment 90
Water hose and connectors 25
Maintenance and Tools  
Toilet maintenance kit 80
Lubricant, polish 20
Quick-cover tape x 2 20
Brushes, sanding, cleaning 45
Antifouling, thinners, tape, epoxy 920
Socket and wrench for propeller 60
Slip at RPAYC 535
Slip and replace prop 550
Solar powered vent 310
Silicone sealant, brush 10
Headsail sheets 169
Silicone lubricant x 2 19
Hacksaw, bastard, molegrips 75
Hire upholstery steam cleaner 32
Fluids for steam cleaner 16
Sump pump 88
Strap wrench 8
Caulking gun, superglue 24
Filters, impeller, oil, coolant 154
Safety Equipment  
PFDs, flares, grease 450
Tender  
Zodiac tender, used 750
Zodiac seat 140
Tender tow rope and fittings 30
Tuff Cote paint for Zodiac 120
Zodiac glue 10
Zodiac repair kit x 2 100
Zodiac rowlock adapters 40
Running Costs  
Diesel Fuel 200
Cooking Gas 20
Fees  
Registration to 17/11/06 160
Registration to 17/11/05 20
Mooring fees (Gibson) 3000
Visitors berth (RPAYC) 70
Insurance 1630
Loan interest to 10/06 (on 75k) 3666


Preparations, not cruising 2006-2007

Fixtures and Fittings  
Cutlery, towels, hangers 72
Maintenance and Tools  
12 vac, furler sheet  90
Antifouling brushes, tape etc 72
Mainsail and foresail service 1077
New foresail and trysail 3236
Buff and polish (Reflections) 650
Tarp., pole, tubing  20
Rubber for snubber 5
Foresail sheets 83
10m anchor chain  90
50m anchor warp 60
Spare plough anchor 79
Shackles, hoses, screws 33
Stainless work (Bluewater) 7335
Haul out, gelcoat repairs 1909
Safety Equipment  
PFDs, boat hook, chart 280
Bearing compass 180
Sailing gloves 38
Manual bilge pump 29
PFD yokes, harnesses  1000
Yoke recharge kits 70
EPIRB 400
Jackstays (Riggtech) 281
Tender  
Walker Bay  2000
Running Costs  
Diesel Fuel 258
Cooking Gas 15
Fees  
Mooring (Gibson) 1750
Visitors berth (RPAYC) 30
Visitors berth (LMYC) 25
Mooring (LMYC) 75
Visitors berth (Anchorage) 290
Mooring (Anchorage) 650
Visitors berth (Nelson Bay) 500
Mooring (Soldiers Point) 997
Insurance 1549
Registration (NSW) 163
Loan interest (on 40k) 2011


2007-2008 (includes 4 months liveaboard, not cruising)

Fixures and Fittings  
Engel fridge 1300
3 new batteries and regulator 1406
Canvas and panel mounts 990
Labels and lettering 68
Lights and small parts 210
Solar panels 920
Electrical wiring and parts 768
Electrical wiring and parts 112
Cigar lighter Y adaptor 10
Water tank sensors and gauge 366
Electrical and plumbing parts 89
Cool boxes 170
Lamps and small parts 162
Mounting brackets 35
Maintenance and Tools  
Oil filter wrench 10
Hammer, screwdriver 37
Plumbing 16
Plumbing 16
Solder sucker 15
Solder, wire, torch 31
Rigging check and halyards 3258
Plumbing and electrics 120
Waste tank  ??
Plumbing for waste tank 80
Safety Equipment  
Musto Trousers 259
Sailing jacket and trousers 275
Running Costs  
Cooking gas 55
Fees  
Mooring (Gibson) 3380
Insurance (Club Marine) 1630
Registration (NSW) 168
Loan interest to 10/08 (approx)  1000
Tender  
Rowlocks 65


2008-2009 (first 5 months only, liveaboard but not cruising

Fixures and Fittings  
Kiwi Prop feathering propeller 1975
Cooking gas tanks 60
Flexible LED lamp 80
Water Maker 4216
Shock cords and cockpit tidies 101
Shade sails 240
Latex mattresses 850
Cover mattresses 500
Maintenance and Tools  
Antifoul, polish etc at Bayview 3476
Shurflo water filter 21
Antifouling 153
Tools, blades, screws, wire etc 418
Plumbing supplies 89
Fuel fixtures 80
Caulking 27
Safety Equipment  
VHF and dry bags 285
Repair kits and dry bags 405
Deck shoes, gloves, jacket 289
Fog horn, grab bag, flares 125
Running Costs  
Cooking gas 30
Diesel Fuel 80
Fees  
Mooring (Gibson) 1800
Insurance (Club Marine) 1623
Registration (NSW) 173
Tender  
Outboard mounts and fittings 52
Seven foot oars and stops 75


Cruising Mar-Apr-May 2009

Fixures and Fittings  
Fishing gear 92
Maintenance and Tools  
Engine oil and filters 94
Printer USB cable 5
Plumbing parts 242
Electrical parts 145
Install tank, blast hull (Noakes) 499
General chandlery 383
Supplies  
Provisioning 1954
Eating and drinking out 704
Clothes 238
Hairdresser etc 83
Public transport 15
Running Costs  
Cooking gas 56
Fuel 269
Batteries 32
Fees  
Mooring 62
Tender  
Outboard Motor 985


Cruising Jun-Jul-Aug 2009

Fixures and Fittings  
Spare fuel tanks 60
Fishing gear 40
Maintenance and Tools  
Electrical parts 46
Plumbing parts  45
Computer parts 660
General chandlery 163
Supplies  
Provisioning 1875
Clothes 150
Eating and drinking out 2609
Public transport 68
Running Costs  
Cooking gas 66
Fuel 281
Fees  
Marina 1265

Monsoon Goodbyes

Our yacht, Pindimara, had been on sale for a few weeks in Darwin, and had in fact already attracted the interest of a couple looking for a production cruising yacht. We were, however, painfully aware that she was stuffed full of our junk, and that we had left all the sails and cushions and cupboards open in an attempt to keep her aired during the hot Darwin summer, so that she looked more like a Chinese laundry than somebody;s pride and joy.

Chinese Laundry
Chinese Laundry

We took a few days off work and flew up to Darwin to move all our gear into storage and give the boat a bit of a scrub; after all, she’d by now been sitting in the marina for almost five months and we thought that she would probably need it. In actual fact she was in fine fettle, just a little damp from several months of tropical humidity which had settled in the bilges. Her decks were tolerably clean and we had suffered no cyclone damage.

Then the monsoon arrived, a monster that settled in across the entire northern half of the continent. Being tolerably well travelled, I thought that I’d seen a bit of rain in my time. This was fundamentally different. Firstly, the air temperature in Darwin’s summer months is up close to forty degrees, and humidity is hovering in the nineties. When the rain comes, it’s warm. And in a monsoon, it’s moving sideways. Reports started to come in of minor tornadoes, and photographic evidence of fish raining out of the sky. There was so much rain that the marina started to fill up and overflow from the run-off, and the boats were bucking at their berths as the water poured in through the storm drains and out through the sluice gates to the sea.

The lock master, Keith, was kept very busy monitoring the levels and adjusting and readjusting the sluices, as well as pumping out sinking boats and rescuing overwhelmed pontoons. Despite all this, he very kindly allowed us to use his office as a sort of half-way-house for our gear, because we had to get it off the boat before we could do anything, and although we had brought many cardboard boxes we only had a limited number of plastic containers that could withstand the torrential rain.

We worked out a system where Bronwyn sweated below as she uncovered ever more boxes of supplies and packed them into plastic containers, while I ran with them back and forth up and down the slippery marina to the office. Whenever the rain paused for a moment, we piled all the boxes we could into Keith’s ute and took them to a storage locker, where I unpacked again and then repacked into cardboard boxes before returning to the marina with the empty plastic ones for another load.

However fast we worked, there were always more lockers to open and more gear to check and to move. It took two days to shift a five-year accumulation of gear and stores. The food was particularly exciting; we had a rough idea that we had a few months worth of stores left aboard, but we could have eaten well for almost six months with the stuff that we found. Some of it was pretty exotic, but its hard to move food across state quarantine lines in Australia, so rather than try to ship it back to Perth, we gave most of it to a delighted Keith.

A lot of the gear that we removed consisted of useful bits and pieces that we had kept in the lazarette in case we needed to repair something; spare sets of oars, bits of marine ply, old rope, propeller parts, broom handles and so on. Rather than dump this gear in the skip, I placed it neatly nearby, thinking that perhaps somebody else might like to keep it. To my amusement, the length of time that each part sat by the skip became shorter and shorter as other yachties began to regularly check what was there. After a few hours, I couldn’t even walk the length of the pontoon without somebody calling out “Are you throwing away that old rope?” and taking it off me.

We became especially popular when we started giving away fuel, because our tanks were full and we wanted to ship the empty deck jerry cans down to Perth. Bronwyn had a similar experience when she started putting dried food, books, and boxes of cleaning products in the marina’s launderette. This was all perfectly familiar, of course. Some of the gear was stuff that I had myself picked up from skips along the way.

Finally the boat was empty, and we began the long process of scrubbing, cleaning and polishing from the bilges to the mast. Still dodging monsoon squalls, we were forever opening the hatches to let in some air, and closing them again to guard against horizontal rain. I was so thoroughly wet that I didn’t dare enter the cabin for fear of dripping water into the bilges, so I crouched under the dodger as each squall rolled over.

Finally, only twenty minutes before we had to leave to catch our flight, we were done. Pindimara looked like a million dollars, and pretty similar to the way that we’d first seen her, all those years ago.

Saloon
Saloon

Galley
Galley

Forepeak
Forepeak

We had thought that we would be shedding some tears, but in the event we never had the time. To a large extent we had got over the grief of parting over the previous months, while we were negotiating with the dealer and putting together a suitable collection of photographs. It’s still hard to look back at those pictures without our eyes misting over, but if there’s one thing that we have learned, it is that the sea is now in our blood, and we will be back.

A Postie in Perth

I came across a wonderful opportunity to train as a postman, which is a job that I have always thought that I would enjoy. For non-Australians, you need to know that postmen here do their rounds entirely by motorcycle, riding directly to each houses letterbox across lawns and kerbs and pavements. Its a subsistence-level position, but all you need to qualify is a clean motorcycle license and no criminal record, and you get to spend a lot of time outside making people happy.

I duly started the training course, which included two interesting days being introduced to the “postie bike”, which is made specially by Honda for Australia Post. At heart it is a CT130 step-through, but it has some interesting refinements, including side-stands on both sides, a hand brake, and a clutchless gear box that will idle in any gear. We had to pass a number of tests, including U-turns in deep sand and negotiating driveways, kerbs and foliage in order to access letterboxes in high and low positions.

There were ten of us in all, from a variety of backgrounds, but about half of us were grizzled veterans of some other business who were looking for a job that was more fun and involved less idiots. Following extensive weaving-in-and-out-of-the-cones, and after some slight problems mastering emergency stops using 1970s-style cable-and-drum brakes, we all passed the test.

Postie Unleashed!
Postie Unleashed!

The job itself is simple but fun. I arrive each day at 6 am and start to sort my letters into the 1200 or so addresses on my route. This can take anything from three to six hours, depending largely on whether it is a bill or magazine day for one or more companies. There are dozens off us packed into a large warehouse, all doing the same thing, and the jokes and ribaldry fly thick and fast.

Sorting Frame
Sorting Frame

Then I load my motorcycle with as many letters as it can carry, and put the rest of them in a van which will leave them at a drop somewhere on my route. Off I potter to my first drop, and then I follow the same route every day, getting slightly faster with every daily iteration.

Australian letter boxes are not typically attached to houses, they are mostly some kind of box or structure at the end of the garden, at least theoretically accessible by motorcycle. We are permitted to ride on the pavements and verges and, depending on where the builders (in their infinite wisdom) decided to put the darn thing, often find ourselves riding in deep sand, gravel, bark chippings, flower beds, freshly rolled lawns, and so forth. The idea is to not actually ride on peoples’ lawns if we can help it, but as often as not I find myself approaching a pristine turf of bowling-green calibre, in the very centre of which has been built a letter box. It’s summertime at the moment, and my bike treads lightly; it will be interesting to see what happens in the rain.

You’d think that there would be some regulation size or position for a letter box, but there is not. Unfortunately this means that a great many of them are completely unsuitable for the delivery of mail, whether by motorcycle or otherwise. Its not just the physical location, although some of them are built at ankle-height which makes for some interesting gymnastics. No, the real problem is that for some reason that is buried in history, the default slot size chosen by almost all builders is about one brick wide and a couple of millimetres shorter than the width of a standard business-letter envelope. By far the greater number of these small boxes are built into a wall, so there is little chance of ever fixing the problem.

Typical Perth letter boxes
Typical Perth letter boxes

The structure pictured here is typical of the breed (note also the excitingly random distribution of house numbers on this example).
It is actually impossible to post a standard letter through such a slot, without first folding it in half or screwing it up into a sort of tube. The slot is typically made of rough-cast brick or cement, and tears the edges off both the letter and your fingers as you push it through.
Imagine the fun that I have with A4 envelopes and glossy magazines! Especially when, as is usually the case, some bozo has come along the night before and has stuffed the whole thing full of advertising leaflets for cheap barbecue utensils.

Life on land

Adjusting to life on land is weird. Our apartment backs on to the Swan River, and on the first day we ambled down to have a look at it. Standing on the shore, I had a strange feeling of disconnection. It took me a little while to understand that where I had previously regarded water as a highway and the land as a barrier, now the roles were reversed. I can’t just hop into our dinghy and cross to the other side; I have to find a bridge or a ferry. The water is no longer my home.


LASERS ON THE SWAN RIVER

It was not all negative. It was nice to have electricity on demand, without continually having to consider the state of the batteries and generators. It was very nice to have unlimited fresh water, although neither of us could bring ourselves to ever waste any of it.

Australians have a strange relationship with fresh water. Whereas Bronwyn and I both come from countries where water is plentiful and yet we were brought up to respect it as a scarce resource, Australia is largely desert and yet the locals are so profligate that the water tables are irreparably sinking and the few major rivers are in the process of drying up. There is no concept of recycling; all used water goes straight into the sea. We had already had an argument with our tenants in Sydney, when we found that their water usage in the little one-bedroom flat was 12,000 litres a month, compared to our 6,500 a month when we had lived there, and of course our 600 litres a month on the boat. They did have the grace to offer to pay the bill.

It was also nice to be able to sleep the whole night through without springing out of my bunk to check the set of the anchor, investigate an unusual noise, or take over a night watch. We had particularly suffered on long passages when our watches spiralled into ever-shorter increments because it wasn’t really possible to get a proper rest while the boat was under way.

Even though we are now on land and none of these problems apply, we have once again found that cruising has changed us. We remain attuned to the cycles of the sun, springing fresh-eyed from bed every morning at dawn (even Bronwyn, who before we went sailing would cheerfully sleep until lunchtime). At the other end of the day, only a few hours after dusk will find us yawning and making our way to bed.

What we miss

We know that we miss the cruising lifestyle, but it is hard to put our finger on exactly why. Some of my happiest moments have been dozing on deck under an infinity of stars, as Pindimara blazes a phosphorescent wake across a boundless sea. Some of my angriest and most frustrated moments have been while dog tired and fighting gusty squalls as angry swells tower above the cockpit. Some of Bronwyn’s worst times were the long uncomfortable passages that seemed to extend forever as the wind and current conspired against us, and some of her best were the explosion of taste in a perfect salad lunch eaten on a sparkling blue sea under a tropical sky.

In short, much of the actual mechanics of sailing wasn’t a great deal of fun, but the opportunity to go where the wind blows and to visit faraway islands, to swim ashore and explore or just to sit on a flawless beach, to snorkel amongst the fearless fish of the reef, to stay as long as you want with nobody to tell you otherwise, all these things made it a way of life worth pursuing.

And when the passage is over and the anchor is safely down, then there are the fascinating people. Old and young, waiters and doctors, paupers and millionaires, all have chosen to live out on the edge, at the interface between the land and the sea. None of them are interested in picking a fight, stealing your wallet, or spray-painting graffiti on your home. All are content to accept you as you are without prejudice or judgement, to be entertained by your story and to swap it for another tall tale in return.

We’ll be back

We will go cruising again. Obviously we need to replenish the coffers, and we are already quite deep into discussions about what “the next boat” will look like. In the meantime we have a few other projects on the go, some of which will take several years to complete, and which require some of the capital that is currently tied up in our yacht. Regretfully, then, we have decided to sell Pindimara where she is, at the marina in Darwin.

That brings this little portion of the blog to a close. Thankyou, gentle readers, for following us this far. For those of you who want to follow the next stage of our plans, keep an eye on The Virtual Reinhard.

In the meantime… anybody want to buy a yacht?

Penniless in Perth

The onset of Darwin’s cyclone season coincided with the extinction of our cruising budget. That we were broke was no surprise, as we’d always known that our little pot of money was going to run out in November 2009. We had originally hoped to have got past Darwin by then, cruising the Kimberleys and then finishing up by selling Pindimara in Perth, but that wasn’t the way that it worked out.

Cruising is like that. You stop where it looks interesting and stay as the weather and your whims dictate; timetables are vague and often thrown out of the window. We had had a spectacular year and were more than satisfied with everything that we had achieved.

Having secured a (hopefully) cyclone-proof marina berth, we now had to decide between returning the following Easter to complete the voyage, and selling her right there in Darwin. In either case, we were committed to paying monthly marina fees at least until the end of the cyclone season, so we had to first find gainful employment.

We could, I suppose, have picked up lucrative contracts in our old discipline of computer programming, but despite the obvious financial incentives, that would have felt like a step backwards from our new lives. Over the year we had gently pursued other opportunities, and both had at least tentative offers of employment in Perth, about 1500 miles away down the west coast, and so after a quick jaunt to Europe to visit friends and relatives we relocated to Western Australia.


DOWNTOWN PERTH

From research on the internet we’d already decided which suburb we wanted to live in, so we checked into a cheap hostel nearby and went out on foot to find an apartment. It didn’t take too long to visit every realtor in the area and to determine the minimum rent that we should pay for a unit in reasonable condition. We saw some lemons, of course, but gradually increased our range in increments of $50 rent per week until we found one that wasn’t actively falling down, at which point we rented it.

Cruising had fundamentally changed the way that we looked at houses. Even the smallest was far larger than Pindimara, so we weren’t especially interested in the size of the lounge or the number of bedrooms. We were only anchoring for a while, not making a purchase, so we didn’t pay much attention to decor. We just looked for a few simple criteria: gas cooking, good natural lighting, and a sensible use of the cooling Fremantle Doctor wind that blows every afternoon. The first flat that we found that fulfilled all of these simple criteria, we took.

Furniture was easy, with simple functionality being the order of the day: cheap table, chairs, desk, sofa, and an expensive mattress. Having spent the previous year storing all our fresh food in a 42 litre Engel outback fridge, we ignored the monstrous walk-in fridge-freezers on display and purchased a small bar fridge instead. Our only real concession to land-bound life was to buy a simple washing machine.

Within a week of arrival, we had somewhere to live, a bicycle for transport, and the promise of jobs.


STILL BAKING, BUT LIVING IN A BOX

The Darwin Build-Up

It was quite incredibly hot. Darwin was going through ‘the build-up’, which is the crossover period between its two seasons. The humidity starts ramping up from the dry season (hot, dry) to the wet season (hot, wet), making the weather more and more muggy but without providing the release of actual rainfall. For the greater part of the day it was literally too hot to move, and we found ourselves sitting in a stupour beneath our electric fan. The boat needed to be cleaned and prepared, but even the smallest task brought rivers of sweat pouring down our backs and legs. Occasionally we made a foray to the cafe so that we could sit under the air conditioner. In the city around us, Darwin’s residents began their annual peak of suicides and murders.

This was crazy. It was time to move on. We made use of the cooler periods of the morning and evening to hose months of accumulated salt from the fibreglass. In preparation for the cyclones we removed everything from the deck, stowed the foresail, lashed the mainsail to the boom, and doubled up all the mooring lines.


AN OVERHEATED BRONWYN HOSES THE DECK

In preparation for the humidity of the wet season, we ate or discarded our remaining fresh goods, filled the fuel and water tanks, sprayed the bilges with mildew preventer, laid cockroach traps, lifted all the seat cushions and topped up the batteries. The marina laundry took a beating as we washed every piece of fabric and packed it all away into vacuum bags.


VACUUM BAGS! WHAT A WONDERFUL INVENTION

In the hot periods of physical lassitude we spent hours on the internet looking at flight schedules and job opportunities, and then spent a few minutes packing for a round the world trip. That’s one of the great things about living on a boat; if you have to catch a plane, you don’t need to spend a lot of time deciding what to bring. Everything that you own goes into a small bag, and off you go.

We arranged for Keith the wonderful and obliging lockmaster to occasionally check and ventilate the boat over the next six months, got in a taxi, and headed for Singapore.


STAY SAFE, PINDIMARA. WE MISS YOU.

Darwin

There isn’t too much to do around Tipperary Waters marina, although the two cafes on the shore are very good and we understand that a bar will be opening soon. The Dinah Sailing club down the road is the only place to get a drink, and although friendly enough it isn’t exactly spectacular. However, public transport is cheap, and it only costs two dollars to get the bus into town and about ten to take the taxi back again.

After so long in the back of beyond, it was surprisingly great to get a good dose of civilisation. We had some excellent tapas at the Moorish Cafe in town, and together with Rob from Ku Ching we tackled the enormous seafood platter at Crustaceans On The Wharf.

We also had a good party session up and down Mitchell Street, which is the restaurant and bar district, and met some fun and interesting people (that’s you, Carlee).

It’s funny that we’re seeing a completely different Darwin to our last visit. That time it was christmas and there was nobody here and nothing was open. Right now in September, the place is hopping. Last night we went to the famous market at Mindle Beach. As well as the crowds milling around in the market itself, there must have been ten thousand people sitting quietly on the beach watching the sunset.


MINDLE BEACH SUNSET

We’re very aware that the wet season seems to be coming early this year. It is very hot and very sticky, and although it isn’t actually raining, the sky is continually threatening.

Two yachts that were heading for Perth recently gave up and turned around and came back, saying that conditions are impossible. Since that’s the direction that we’re heading, we’ve spent a lot of time canvassing the local cruisers, and even though we’re aware that one man’s “impossible” is another woman’s “fun sail”, there is a solid consensus is that we’re looking at a very hard trip down the coast.

Faced with a rough ride, and aware that since we’ve started rushing along the coastline we haven’t been enjoying ourselves half as much as we ought to, we’ve decided to leave Pindimara in Darwin for the wet and cyclone seasons, and to come back and finish the trip in the middle of next year. Not only does it give us a chance to do some work and replenish the coffers, but it also means that we’ll be able to take our time cruising the Kimberleys rather than continually rushing along and checking over our shoulders for a cyclone.

The tides of Beagle Gulf

Carefully timing the tides, we went to bed for some rest before getting up and leaving at midnight. It was a starry but moon-less night, there were almost no lights on the shore of Bathurst Island, and there was no wind at all. The backwash from the steaming light off the back of the furled foresail gave a strange, misty air to the world, so that we seemed to be coccooned in an ethereal blanket. We may have left a little late, as I forgot that it would take nearly 2 hours to get out of Gordon Bay, but the tide sucked us out and then gave us a 3.5 knot boost toward Darwin.

Despite the complete absence of any wind, the water got quite exciting, a roller coaster ride. At one point we were smashing through standing waves and I was wondering how Bronwyn, even though she is a champion sleeper, could possibly be snoozing in the fore-peak. As far as I could imagine, she must have been in the air half the time. Then the whole yacht went airborne off one wave and ploughed into the next, washing the decks of the accumulated mud and ash, and replacing them with sand and shells. A tousled head appeared in the companionway. “How fast are we going?” she asked, before heading sleepily back to bed.

A little later the propeller didn’t seem to be able to get any traction. Bear in mind that it was completely black. I peered into the small pool of light cast by the stern light, and could just make out that the water was bubbling and boiling beneath us. Presumably there was so much air in the thrashing water that the prop was cavitating.

Sliding sideways into the Beagle Gulf, I suddenly had an inspiration and realised that I might be able reprogram part of the autopilot to display the GPS ‘course over ground’. Then I could judge the tidal set without continually going below to check our position on the chart. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. It worked a treat, and while I was at it I added a display for the water temperature. For the record, in the middle of the night in September, it was 27 centigrade. No wonder it is popular with crocodiles.

The sun came up, and the sea became flat an placid in all directions. We couldn’t see the shore and were completely alone.


NOBODY HERE BUT US CHICKENS

Suddenly an enormous cargo ship appeared, in a great hurry to get somewhere. It passed us by and disappeared again.


WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?

Time passed. There was not a breath of wind. We motored.

The tide started to pick us up as planned for the final approach into Darwin, slowly increasing the boost until we were doing over 10 knots.


LEFT – LOG SPEED. RIGHT – SPEED OVER GROUND

We could see the Darwin skyline, but we couldn’t get a mobile phone connection. Broadband internet was working, though, so we used Skype to call the closest marina, Cullem. They explained that although they did have a free berth, we would be charged $240 for the privilege of opening the lock gate. I think not. We called Tipperary Marina, who were able to fit us in at a more reasonable price. Although they were another four miles upriver, the continuing tide made mincemeat of the distance.

The approach to Tipperary was interesting, up a river which dries out at low tide. We maintained radio contact with Keith the lockmaster, and as we were passing a seemingly unbroken rock wall, he asked us if we could see him waving. Eventually we spotted him in the dusk, and realised that there was an all-but-invisible break in the wall. It was like the Gulgari Rip all over again, but this gap was only seven metres wide.

We negotiated the lock without any problems, and found ourselves in a trim and tidy little marina full of smart long-term liveaboards. Keith was wonderfully helpful and did a great job of making us feel welcome.

The showers were excellent.

Decisions at Gordon Bay

We had an exciting ride out of Snake Bay in a strong nor’easter which took us at 7 knots to Cape Van Diemen, the northern tip of Melville Island. For the rest of the night we followed the coastline southward, riding the winds until they faltered in mid morning. We were starting to notice an opposing tide, so rather than waste fuel we anchored off Bathurst Island in about 70 square miles of sheltered and shallow water. Only the southern part, Gordon Bay, has been named or charted, so we dropped anchor there in about 10 metres and spent the rest of the day pottering around. I really should have been doing my schoolwork, but after many night watches with my iPod I had finally almost finished organising our music collection, so I finished off that job instead.

Although we still carried a couple of month’s worth of dried and tinned ingredients, we were desperately short of fresh food. We ate our last orange, leaving us with one sweet potato and two onions. It was decision time. Wyndham or Darwin? We had to provision at one or the other before tackling the Kimberleys. Each town had its advantages and disadvantages.

Darwin has evil spring tides, an approach route that leads into the teeth of the trade winds, and nowhere simple to stay. The choice there is between anchoring in Fannie Bay and dragging the dinghy through half a mile of mud, or booking through the lock gates into one of the marinas. Because of the drying tides, all of Darwin’s marinas have lock gates that only let you in and out at certain times, considerably restricting your freedom. On the other hand, if we could get into a marina then shopping would be easy.

Wyndham lies at the bottom of the Bonaparte Gulf and was still several days away. The winds in the Gulf are notoriously inconsistent, and the GRIB showed that we would encounter confused light winds coming from every direction. The only place to anchor is in the strongly tidal river, the jetty is apparently only useable for a few hours each day, and the actual town is a taxi ride from the river. After provisioning, it’s a long hard slog back out of the Gulf. On the other hand, we’d never been there before and it has the dubious pleasure of having Australia’s hottest average temperature (32C).


THE JOSEPH BONAPARTE GULF

The trade winds were set to slacken. We also fancied a meal in a restaurant. We chose Darwin.

Musings in Milikapiti

When we awoke in our little mud pond in the Snake River, I sat on deck and looked across the water at the settlement of Milikapiti. It seemed strange to be anchored so close to a shoreline aboriginal community, to be connected to their broadband mast and choked by their bush fires and yet not have any social interaction.

Firstly, we are not allowed on to aboriginal land without a pre-arranged permit. Secondly, the residents of the Arnhem Land coastline, even here on the island, do not seem to make any use of boats. Although their houses and cars line the beaches, they never seem to have any jetties, tinnies or even canoes. We have passed woven branch fishing traps within wading distance of the shore, but we’ve never once seen an aboriginal person out on the water.

The upshot of this is that we can’t visit them, and they can’t visit us. It does feel a bit strange.

And then, just as we were leaving, three enormous aluminium powerboats came flying down the river and were whisked up a ramp and out of sight. I thought that I would have to revise (or even delete) this blog entry as it looked like I was wrong.

I couldn’t really see who was in the boats, so I fired off a couple of dozen shots with the telephoto lens. Later that day I blew up the images and realised that the people in the boats were all white, possibly pearl fishermen. So my comments still stand.

Snake Bay

Ahead of us were the infamous tidal flows of Darwin and its guardian Dundas and Clarence Straits, two or more days of irresistable rips and crucial tide timetables. For a clean run, one writer claimed that we needed to maintain an average speed of eight knots, which even allowing for a following current is a bit of an ask. Lugubrious cruising guides spoke of yachts that had mistimed it and anchored up, only to be sucked out of their safe bays by the marauding rip. On top of this, it’s the end of winter and we’re heading into the spring tides when the tides exceed nine metres and everything is just that little bit worse.


DUNDAS AND CLARENCE STRAITS (SCALE: 90 MILES)

Jimmy Cornell in his influential book ‘World Cruising Routes’ states quite bluntly that it should not be attempted, and recommends taking the longer route around Melville Island, even though this adds a hundred miles to the journey and ends with seventy miles of beating into wind to get to Darwin.

Even taking the northern route, cautious tidal planning is still necessary. We left Port Essington on a falling tide, hoping to get sucked out of the bay and at least half way across the entrance to the Dundas Strait before having to fight the easterly set. The plan began well, but inevitably we ended up in a hard slog against up to five knots of current. Luckily the trade winds were behind us and we could make a few knots of headway.

Evening fell as we fought free of the influence of the Strait, and then we had a hard nights sail across the top of Melville Island. The currents were increasingly difficult to predict and we zigzagged wildly. Even at the large scale of the chart above, you can see that our route was not exactly straight.

We sailed all night and most of the next day. We didn’t seen any other boats, but we did spot a bird floating along on the sea. You might not think that this was so strange, but the bird, apparently a black and white booby, was nonchalantly standing upright on the surface. As we got closer, we realised that it was standing on the back of a turtle that was nonchalantly swimming along. The pair were still together when they passed over the horizon.

By mid afternoon we were entering Snake Bay. We knew nothing at all about this area apart from the fact that it was a north-facing river entrance that should give us protection from the south-easterly trades, and that the aboriginal community there had a broadband mast. We’d been out of touch for well over a week, and quite apart from updating this blog, we needed to check on our university work and deal with some business.

Snake Bay is divided into easterly and a westerly channels, and judging by the patterns of the sand banks on the chart it looked as if the eastern side would have less current. By the time we got there, though, the wind had shifted to the NE and was blowing straight at us, building up an uncomfortable chop. Aware that the charts only had a zone of confidence of C (“depth anomalies may be expected”), we crept further upstream looking for shelter, but found none.

It was time for Plan B. I had previously noted that it seemed to be just possible to squeeze through a 30 metre gap in the shoals and access the main western channel, before tackling a 30 metre wide bar between two drying banks which would drop us into a 5 metre deep pool inside a large drying mud lake.

In a nifty and stylish piece of navigation (I can safely say this in retrospect, since we didn’t hit anything) we arrived at the centre of the 100 metre square pool and dropped anchor in millpond smooth waters.


APPLAUSE!

After catching up with the outside world and sipping a G&T or two, we collapsed into bed for our first sleep in 48 hours. The wind shifted in the night, and blew ash and smoke from the aboriginal fires through the cabin. I imagine that it kept the mosquitoes away.

Victoria, an abandoned settlement

We anchored off Adams Head, deep in Port Essington, and set off in the relative cool of the morning to explore the abandoned settlement of Victoria. The temperature was still in the thirties.

In the early 1800s, England had settled parts of the eastern coast of Australia but was concerned that the northern reaches of this vast continent might be vulnerable to Dutch and French expansion from their colonies in the East Indies.

Two military bases were set up, Fort Dundas on Melville Island and Port Wellington on the Cobourg Peninsula, but both settlements failed due to the harsh conditions. The English government persisted, and in 1838 set up the civilian settlement of Victoria at a site much farther inland, at Adam Head on the shores of the large Port Essington bay.


ADAM HEAD (WITH LATERITIC PROFILE)

Surveys had shown that there was a plentiful supply of fresh water, and also that the area might support a successful trepang trade. We’ve seen traces of similar activity (trepang are also known as beche-de-mer, or sea cucumbers or sea slugs) all over the northern islands and coasts. Mrs Watson of Lizard Island was there because her husband was a beche-de-mer fisherman. The sea slugs themselves were traded at great profit to the Chinese who regard them as a delicacy. I tried one once in Shanghai, and it was indeed very expensive but also tasted pretty much the way that you would expect.

The settlement began bravely, with a prefabricated Governor’s House, a church, a hospital, thatched and shingled cottages, and a military barracks.


CORNISH CHIMNEYS OF THE MARRIED QUARTERS

For food they had vegetable gardens, imported water buffalo, and a peaceable trading relationship with the local aboriginals and with visiting Macassan (Indonesian) trepang fishermen.

Unfortunately the original survey had been conducted in the wet season, and for the other six months of the year the colony had to rely on ever deeper wells.


THIS WOULD BE A LAKE IN THE WET

A cyclone hit in the second year, and destroyed much of what had been built. The supply ships came only intermittently, and the soil turned out to be so poor that their gardens were barely better than subsistance. Malaria became a way of life, eventually killing almost a quarter of the residents.


ONE OF THE FEW SURVIVING GRAVESTONES

At times fully half of the population were in hospital, not only from malaria but also from dysentery, influenza and scurvy.

After eleven hard years, the political situation had changed and foreign incursion was no longer regarded as a threat. The survivors were shipped out and the settlement was abandoned.

Some of the buildings were subsequently and intermittently used by freelance trepang fishermen and hunters tracking the now wild water buffalo, but the bush soon moved back in. It didn’t take long for most of the signs of civilisation to be erased.

SOME INTERESTING TREES

Epiphany at Black Point

We were becoming a little jaded with the sail across the top of the Northern Territory. Access to the entire shoreline is essentially forbidden to non-Aboriginals without a permit, and permits are not easy to get. The rest of our world consists of featureless waters and small islands that we’re not allowed to visit either.

This morning we found ourselves at anchor off Black Point, Port Essington. The bay has a pronounced roll and we awoke irritable and grumpy, and not looking forward to more mindless mileage. We feel that we’ve seen little in the last thousand miles apart from sea water and the inside of a few pubs. Without our university work to keep us occupied and to fuel our discussions, we probably would have cracked long before this. Were we going too far, too fast?

Port Essington is part of a national park, and there is a ranger station at Black Point. I called up the ranger on the radio to see if it was possible to get a permit to go ashore at the nearby historical settlement of Victoria, and received the welcome news that no permit was required for day visits. Eager to see a new face after a week at sea, I tossed the dinghy over the side and rowed to shore to get more details. Just as I was setting the anchor on the beach, the ranger’s helicopter lifted off from behind the treeline and headed off seaward. Darn!

I went up to his house anyway and found the visitor centre, which was closed. Persistence paid off as I found an unlocked rear entrance and spent a happy hour or so wandering around the nice little museum there.

On the way back to the dinghy, I stopped on the beach and dug my feet into the baking hot sand. Scattered around me were hundreds of shell and coral fragments. I picked up a handful and realised that I was looking at more individual new things than I had seen in the entire past week.

The realisation hit that, although sailing is fun, I am first and foremost a land mammal. There just isn’t enough variety on the water to keep me that interested. Rowing back to Pindimara, I imparted this new-found wisdom to Bronwyn, who of course had worked it out for herself weeks ago and was waiting for me to catch up.

We decided to take a little holiday from our holiday, and instead of continuing westward turned inland, deeper into the bay in the direction of the ruined town of Victoria some three hours away.

It felt good to be heading for a real destination that we could walk around on, rather than just another palm-fringed inaccessible beach on the way to the next one. In addition, Port Essington is sheltered from the swell but not from the trade winds, so we were soon creaming along at a steady seven knots. Flying fish sparkled across the water before us, dolphins cruised serenely alongside. Even heeled over, the boat hung reasonably steady in the flat azure sea, and Bronwyn popped below for long enough to bake a batch of scones.

Things were looking up.

Across the Arafura Sea

We didn’t have permits to go onto aboriginal land anywhere across the Northern Territories, so we did not get off on Raragala Island and did not plan to set foot on land again until we got to Darwin. Cruisers who were doing the distance more slowly had applied for permits with variable results. One boat’s applications got repeatedly ‘lost’. Another boat got every permit that they asked for, but dated in such a way that there was no way that they could possibly use them.

Not only did we want to become embroiled in aboriginal bureaucracy, but we were also aware of the impending cyclone season, so we decided to skip Arnhem Land completely. We drew a straight line on the chart across the Arafura Sea to the Cobourg Peninsula near to Darwin.


ACROSS THE ARAFURA SEA


SAILING INTO THE SUNSET (A FIRST!)

We were at sea for two days and two nights, during which time we sighted no land, no ships, no planes, and only three items of interest. The first was a banded coral snake. The second was a very lost ten-inch crab, swimming at the surface miles from shore. The third was a juvenile petrel who roosted on our dodger for most of the second night, completely unconcerned with the comings and goings of crew with bright lights and cameras.


PIDGE

On the morning of the third day we sighted land and dropped anchor on the south-western side of Grant Island for a rest. We couldn’t go ashore, because even this was aboriginal land, but we couldn’t face any more sailing and needed to get some decent sleep. After a few hours the swell turned around and began to hit us on the beam, which is never comfortable and a sure fire trigger for lost sleep and tinkling crockery. The good news was that the sea conditions were right and there was room to swing about; I could finally try a trick that Virginia had mentioned to us months ago.

Picture this: We’re at anchor. Boats at anchor are designed to point into wind, so the wind is coming from dead ahead. The swell is slapping into us from starboard (right hand side). I got a long rope and tied one end to the anchor chain where it dropped over the bow roller, and the other end to the port stern quarter (left back) of the boat. Returning to the front of the boat, I let out ten extra metres of anchor chain, dragging that end of the rope far below the surface of the water. Strolling back to the stern end of the rope, I attached it to a winch and wound it in, dragging the stern around to port, and pointing the bow into the swell. Rather than streaming off the anchor in a straight fore-and-aft line, the boat was now hanging sideways on a Y-shaped harness. The rocking stopped. Brilliant. Thankyou, Virginia.

In the morning we got up and looked at the perfect and inviting beach. Ah well. We had no permit, and anyway it was time to move on. We hoisted sail and headed out of the bay.

Just for a change we had a perfect combination of strong following winds and a swell that was directly astern. We could move around the yacht freely, read books and concentrate on small tasks without feeling seasick. It seemed as good a time as any to learn how to make an eye splice.


SEAMANSHIP

We’d planned to reach Black Point in the large bay of Port Essington by midnight, but we were making cracking progress and turned into the entrance shortly after nightfall. It was a pitch black moonless night, and much of the territory up here is not well charted. There are some spot heights and guesstimated contours, but even these are only 95% certain to be within 2 metres vertically and 500 metres horizontally, which is quite a lot of uncertainty. Nevertheless there wasn’t much that we could do about it, so we charged through in pitch darkness at something over six knots and, navigating by GPS, dropped anchor in 5 metres of water a respectable distance on the chart from the invisible reef and the invisible shore.

Once everything was ship-shape, I got out the big spotlight to have a last check for any hazards, and illuminated Black Point Beach only a few metres away in front of the bow. We hastily weighed anchor and backed off a few hundred yards before putting it back down again.

The Hole in the Wall

The first barrier to our westward route was a group of three long island chains, all running parallel to each other SW to NE. The first set were the Bromby Islets sticking up ten miles from the top of mainland Arnhem Land. Then we had to cross a channel called the Malay Road and squeeze between a couple of the English Companys Islands, before finally crossing Donnington Sound and finding a route through the Wessel Islands.

The most obvious route (apart from the long way around over the top of the Wessels) was to sneak between the Brombys and Cape Wilberforce at the top of Arnhem Land, run the gap between Cotton and Wigram Islands, and then take the Gulgari Rip between Raragala and Guluwuru Islands.


WESTWARD

The only problem with this plan was that each crossing demanded a particular time of the tide. Get it wrong and we could, for instance, face a 12 knot opposing current through the Gulgari Rip.

After a little thought and some work with the guides and tide tables we realised that if we left Gove shortly after midnight, we could use the moonlight to get out of the harbour and be crossing the Brombys at slack tide just after dawn. Then we had just enough time to get across the Malay Road and through the English Companys before the tide started flooding, after which the sail across Donnington Sound would bring us to the Gulgari Rip at the top of the following tide.

One disadvantage of the plan was that the literature was quite vague about the exact time that the tide turns in each of the passes, but we thought that we had probably figured it close enough.

We arrived at the Brombys in the pre-dawn light. The channel was half a mile across and we crossed it without any problems.


THROUGH THE FIRST GAP

The gap between Cotton and Wigram was more of a dogleg and reputed to have a four-knot rip. Even though we must have been close to slack tide we still got sucked through, and had to do some fancy footwork to avoid an area of boiling rip at the western end, where the seabirds were having a breakfast feeding frenzy.


CLIFFS OF COTTON ISLAND


BREAKFAST AT THE RIP

It’s about fifteen miles across Donnington Sound to the Wessel Islands, so we took it in turns to sleep.

The Gulgari Rip between Raragala and Guluwuru Islands is also known as ‘The Hole in the Wall’ because it is so narrow and difficult to see. Decent winds saw us arriving half an hour early, and we were a little disappointed at first to see that from the our direction the gap was really obvious. We didn’t want to get too close without committing, but through the binoculars I could make out whitecaps which suggested that the eastward rip was still running towards us. We hove to and drifted in the sunshine for an hour while we ate lunch and waited for the time that we believed that the tide would turn.

At the appointed hour, which was slightly after high tide at faraway Gove, we reset the sails and discovered that the hole had disappeared. Even though I had memorised the surrounding cliff structure when we arrived, the gap was still completely invisible until we found precisely the right approach angle. Our first sight of it must have just been very lucky.

Hoping that we were now at the top of the tide, we sailed into the bay that funnelled us in to the gap, arriving at about half past Gove high tide. We knew that the gap was about 70 metres wide with 30 metres of that navigable, but that’s still only 3 boat lengths across and as we approached it at 5 knots it looked terrifyingly narrow.


APPROACHING THE GULGARI RIP

Once through the jaws, the surrounding cliffs shielded us from the winds and the sails went slack. We’d expected this and had the engine idling in preparation, but we didn’t need it because the boat started to accelerate as the Rip sucked us in.

After that, the ride got surreal. We glided with slack sails between picturesque stacks of rock on either side, with nothing to do beyond keeping the bow pointed at the far end. Here and there, people have smeared graffiti on the rocks to show that they have been through; the crew of HMAS Wollongong were particularly obvious. Tiny bays open out on either side, and it is rumoured that some of them are deep enough to shelter in if you find yourself halfway through and fighting too strong a rip. I can’t imagine trying to get into one of them with your boat already out of control.


JUST PASSING THROUGH

I shot some very bad video that shows some of these bays.

VIDEO: THE HOLE IN THE WALL (3MB. WON’T WIN AN OSCAR)

The Rip spat us out into the Arafura Sea, and we popped around the corner to a safe anchorage in Guruliya Bay to get some sleep. In the morning we had a long passage ahead of us.

Gove and Nhulunbuy

Gove is another Rio Tinto bauxite mining site, but quite different from the operation on the other side of the Gulf. Whereas the town of Weipa was purpose-built in the wilderness to service the mine, there were already existing settlements on the Gove peninsula when the miners came so they had to fit in around what was already there.


REFINED

Around the harbour itself are situated the Rio Tinto Alcan bauxite refinery and alumina loader, the Perkins delivery barge terminal, fields of sodium hydroxide tailings, and the Gove Yacht Club. Everything else is in Nhulunbuy Township a dozen kilometres down the road.


YACHTS AND TAILINGS

The yacht club gave us a warm welcome, and for a few dollars we purchased temporary membership which gave us access to a shower block and laundry, as well as a key to get in the back door of the pub which was handy when the front door was locked against drunken and screaming aboriginals, an all too frequent occurrence.


GOVE YACHT CLUB

The clientele of the club was a mix of aboriginal drinkers from the dry townships down the road, visting yachties like ourselves, and workers at for Rio Tinto who chose to live aboard rather than in town. The harbour contained quite a few wrecks of old liveaboard boats that had sunk when their tenant moved on to another mining contract.


GOVE HARBOUR FROM THE YACHT CLUB

The taxi service from the yacht club into Nhulunbuy was enormously expensive, so by far the best way to get there was to hire a car for the day. The cheapest service was run by local resident Manny (08 8987 2300) who charged us fifty dollars for the day’s use of a decent Hilux Twin-Cab, immediately saving us money over the cost of a taxi each way.

The ute enabled us to provision, although not to buy alcohol because the township is dry and you need a special license just to buy it from the supermarket.


FORBIDDEN FRUIT

One of the recurrent conversational themes at the club was how difficult it was to get fuel from the Perkins barge dock. Not only was it tricky to manoeuver in and out, but there were quite a few tales about how reluctant they were to service yachts at all. We threw some fuel cans into the back of the ute and filled up at the service station in town.

Nhulunbuy had little character and could be described as a number of houses of various sizes scattered around some small apartment blocks. There were a couple of small and run-down malls offering a supermarket and take-away food, a bank, a few clothing stores and a post office. The civic pride that was so obvious in Weipa was missing here, and the streets were lined with discarded junk.


DOWNTOWN NHULUNBUY

Since we had a car, we braved the “no entry without a permit” signs to visit the art gallery in neighbouring Yrrkala. The gallery was interesting, and so was the museum of artifacts and the photographic record of the conscripted aboriginal forces in WW2, but the gallery prices seemed to us to be rather high. It didn’t seem to hurt their business, though, because the building was scattered with brand new computer equipment and bark and wood paintings that had been packaged up for delivery to satisfied customers.

We spent several evenings at the yacht club and met a lot of interesting people. A bunch of backpackers had recently been abandoned there after crewing for a yacht whos skipper had promised them flights back to Perth from Gove. The yacht had sailed off into the sunset leaving them stranded on the beach, and they’d made the best of it by working at the club. Some kind soul had put them up on one of the boats in the harbour.

We also met Jan and Neville on Panache and Selina and Stephen on Westward II, as well of course Paul on the ‘big grey cat’ who entertained us with tales of his extraordinary life sailing from place to place. Gerry and Alan gave us a tour of Black Gold, probably the highest-tech power boat in Australia, which can run on practically anything – old sump oil, chip fat, coconut oil – because it has been built around a miniature hydrocarbon cracking refinery and computer controlled blending station. On the outside it looks like a rich man’s plaything. Very impressive indeed.

Time passed, and it became clear that Gove is one of those pleasant black holes where your life can slip away in a blur of alcohol and gossip. Some yachts had been there for years. Even the GPS didn’t know what time it was, never really deciding whether we were in Northern Territory or Queensland.

The only real irritant were the sandflies. Almost completely invisible, they were always attacking our lower limbs. We tried nets and mosquito coils and sprays and even set off an insect bomb on the boat, but they were completely unstoppable. According to the chemist in Nhulunbuy, they weren’t actually biting us, but were peeing on us and their pee is really toxic. Bronwyn was particularly susceptible, and all her sandfly sores turned into violently itchy welts.


ATTRACTIVE TO FLIES

It’s a feature of aboriginal life that they love to set fire to things. You can always tell if an island on aboriginal land is inhabited because of the enormous pall of greasy smoke that hangs over it, and here on the mainland it was no different. Every piece of bush was continually burning. Even when a roadside verge had already been reduced to stark black sticks, somebody on the way back from the pub would still try to light it. Long term yacht residents talked of weekly deck washes to remove the stray ash, and indeed Pindimara wasn’t looking too clean herself.


FOOTPRINTS IN THE ASHES

We woke one morning to find the whole peninsula in flames and the anchorage disappearing into the smoke. We took one last trip to shore to load up with water, hand in our key and say goodbye, then set our sights on destinations westward.

Across the Gulf of Carpentaria

It was time to embark on our first proper ocean passage. Although we have done many multi-day non-stop passages, we’ve never really been more than 20 miles from land and there’s almost always been some island or cape within a few hours sailing that we could hide behind if the weather turned nasty.

The trip from Weipa to Gove is a 300-mile straight line across the Gulf of Carpentaria, with no islands or shelter of any kind. We already knew from our voyage to Weipa that the weather in the Gulf was very changeable, but although our GRIB files reflected this, there was nothing really nasty in the forecast for the next few days.

We set off up the channel out of Weipa harbour, carefully giving the working dredgers a wide berth, and crossed into the open sea with a good following wind. The water was so clear, and the seabed sand so yellow, that the terns wheeling about our mast became magically green in the reflected light.


RARE AUSTRALIAN GREEN TERN

Dolphins came to see us off, jostling each other to get the prime position just under the bow. For some reason, a dolphin’s idea of a good time is to have five tonnes of yacht crashing repeatedly down on his head. Each to their own, I guess.


ME NEXT! ME! ME!

The flat landscape of Cape York soon dropped over the horizon, and we were alone in the blazing heat. The instruments told us that the boat was moving, but there were no points of reference and we might as well have been standing motionless in an eternity of blue.


NOBODY HERE BUT US CHICKENS

Later that afternoon, the wind died and left us becalmed. We began to take the sails down in preparation for starting the motor, and then noticed a curious rippling in the surface of the mirror-smooth sea. We looked around a little nervously at the clear blue sky. Nothing was visible, but we were very aware of a breathless pause. Something was about to happen.

Suddenly the cockpit was full of insects. Hundreds of them swarmed all over the boom and the Hydrovane sail, and spun in a motley cloud above the targa. I examined the nearest handful and saw that they were small brown beetles. I assumed that we had encountered a migratory swarm, but then Bronwyn shouted “Ow!” as something bit her, and we realised that there were dozens of different species of all shapes and sizes. In addition to the beetles, which seemed to be a kind of grain thrip, there were enormous black and white horseflies, dung flies in yellow and green, a variety of moths, and some big and evil-looking red-headed wasps. There were even some flightless creatures, scuttling ants and spiders.

In short, it looked as if something had sucked up all the insects from a crop field, carried them twenty miles out to sea, and then dumped them on our boat.

Some years ago, I watched small dust-devils sucking up hay and making crop circles in a field in Belgium, and only a few months ago we saw a waterspout that dropped its load of sea water onto Capricorn which was passing by, so I can only imagine that something similar happened here. The sea is surely a very strange place.

No sooner had we swept the nastiest of the insects overboard, then the wind shifted 180 degrees and we were hurriedly re-hoisting the sails to go close-hauled. It was time to go sailing.

For several days and nights we continued, with fair winds and with none at all, with large swell and small, alternately running, reaching and motoring as conditions dictated. We didn’t see a single other vessel.


KEEPING A VIGILANT LOOKOUT

When the wind was blowing, we let Harriet the hydrovane do the steering, except when the wind dropped too much and the size of the swell exceeded the force of the breeze and made the boom slap at the bottom of every trough. Eventually I worked out a way of tying the boom down, which solved that little problem.

The wind tended to die off completely at night. We came to hate the periods of extended motoring, for the following swell demanded full concentration to stay on course, hour after hour after hour. I cursed the Raytheon dealer in Sydney who was supposed to have repaired our autopilot, but who just wasted our time instead. Our problem was exacerbated by the lack of landmarks, so that instead of simply aiming for a cape or a lighthouse we had to stare continuously at the compass, which is a very tiring way of motoring. At night we had a full moon, which was good for visibility but bad for steering because it washed the stars out and gave us nothing to steer by.

When the sails were up, even without the hydrovane the yacht was balanced and we were free to get up and walk around. Under motor, we were glued to the helmsman’s position. Our backsides became raw from sitting on the hard cockpit seats in the rolling sea, forcing us to adopt ever stranger seating positions in an attempt to bring some new part of our anatomy to bear that wasn’t already red and raw. I cut up some foam and made deck cushions, which made a tremendous psychological difference but which in reality only took the edge off the pain.

The third night was the worst. Turn and turn about, our spells at the wheel became shorter and shorter before we had to call down for a change of watch. Repeatedly rousted from less than two hours of sleep, we rested our chins on the wheel and stared at the compass through scratchy, red raw eyes. We were so tired that the boat was veering as much as sixty degrees to either side. Shortly after dawn we gave up, killed the engine and just let her drift unmanned while we both collapsed gratefully into blissful oblivion.

When we awoke, the sun was high in the sky and the sea was a still as a mill pond. We made breakfast and then fired up the motor again.

The day passed slowly, with no signs of life either human or animal. And then – Land Ho! A distant beach shimmered on the horizon.

We now have some inkling of how those early sailors must have felt when their destination hove into view after months at sea. Our hearts swelled, and we began to grin maniacally. Land! Land! Finally we had something to steer for, and we began to talk about what we would do when we reached land. Would there be showers? Would there be cold beer, would there be steak? Which would we have first?

The shoreline crept closer, until we could distinguish the passage between the mainland and Bremer Island, where aboriginal fires were burning. We’d heard that this was the traditional place for teenage delinquents, who were taken there to re-learn cultural values if they had transgressed against society. If this was still the case, then they certainly seemed to be busy at the moment.

A small yacht sailed out from behind the headland, crew waving cheerily as they passed. Sweaty, smelly, salt-encrusted and weary, we waved back. We had arrived.


WHERE THE HECK DID YOU COME FROM?

The Katadyn Makes Water

We are the proud owners of four thousand dollar’s worth of Katadyn Powersurvivor 40E desalinator, but so far we had never managed to get it running properly. With the coast-hopping segment of our voyage behind us and some long non-stop passage-making ahead of us, I really wanted to get it going. The opportunities for filling up with clean fresh water over the top end and down the west coast will be few and far between.


KATADYN POWERSURVIVOR 40E

The problem with water-makers is that you can only test them when you are out in deep clean ocean, because any trace of organics (as found inshore) or chlorine (as found in tap water) can permanently and expensively kill the osmotic membrane. Since arriving in northern Queensland, we had been pretty permanently sailing through orange algal bloom, which is no good at all.

The story so far was that sometimes it made water, and sometimes it just blew bubbles, and there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I variously re-plumbed, bypassed and short-circuited different parts of the machine in accordance with the instructions in the Katadyn manual, and after carefully following the troubleshooting flow diagrams, sent it back to the dealer for testing.

The dealer fired it up, said that there was nothing wrong with it, and sent it back (a process that spanned several weeks and as many marina office drop boxes). I plumbed it back in, and hey presto it worked first time. We waited a couple of days and then tried again, and sure enough it refused to make any fresh water at all. It seemed to only work when I was testing it, not when I actually wanted some water. The dealer didn’t have any opinion apart from “there’s something wrong with your installation, maybe an air bubble somewhere”. Thanks a bunch.

Far too late in the day, I thought of consulting Nigel Calder’s excellent “Boat Owner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual”, and found that the limiting factor was whether or not the unit could build up enough water pressure on the osmotic membrane. Since the unit doesn’t have a pressure gauge, there’s no way to tell whether it has or not. Mr Calder opined that there is a direct correlation between the amp-hours in the house batteries and the pressure in the unit, but unfortunately the distinction between ‘the batteries are charged enough’ and ‘the batteries are not charged enough’ is too subtle to be picked up by our boat’s instrumentation.

Before installing the unit I had done the math and knew that I would need to run the tow generator at the same time as the water-maker in order to get enough power, which is what I had been doing. On paper it looked fine, but perhaps the reality was different.

I experimented some more, and after considerable frustration and more than one occasion when I announced that I was chucking the whole thing over the side, I settled on first running the tow generator alone for an hour or two to make sure that there was enough reserve in our (apparently already fully charged) batteries, and only then firing up the water-maker.


IT’S WORKING!

Finally, the Katadyn makes water. We can now reliably make five litres an hour. If the sun is high over the solar panels and we’re pulling the tow generator at over five knots, then we can run the unit for three or four hours without unduly stressing the system. Since we can get by on about 15 litres of water a day, we are now borderline self-sufficient in fresh water. Hurrah!

Weipa

Weipa is a Rio Tinto company town of 3500 souls (a third of them children!) that exists to service the largest bauxite mine in the world. Many of those bulk carriers that we encountered in our journey up the reef were carrying bauxite ore to the smelters that we visited in Gladstone, so we were interested to see this end of the process as well.

From the chart we could see that there are two rivers that flow past Weipa, Mission to the north and Embley to the south. The Embley River is the shipping channel and well provided with navigation markers. The Mission River is much, much closer to town but has no markers and nobody in the literature seems to mention it as a potential anchorage. We went with the herd and put our anchor down in Embley across from the ore loader, in a large natural harbour ringed with beaches and mangroves.

We could see some houseboat moorings against the north shore, and there seemed to be a couple of other yachts anchored over there, but they were close to the ore loaders and we decided instead to shelter under the lee of the southern shore. The anchorage was calm, comfortable and quiet, except at the bottom of the tide when there was a 4.5 knot rip but it only rocked the boat for an hour or so in the morning. Occasionally a Panamax-class bulk carrier came by, but the harbour is big enough that we didn’t really notice, except when they eclipsed the sun.

The only way to shore is by Evans Landing, a public jetty that gives access to Steve the houseboat guy’s premises and little else apart from a telephone box, which you will need because the only realistic way into town from there is to call a taxi. Evans Landing was a mile away across the bay from our anchorage, but not a problem for our little 3 horsepower dinghy as long as we avoided low tide.


AN ANCHORAGE FAR, FAR AWAY. CAN YOU SEE OUR MAST?

Naturally the first thing that we did when we got to shore was to hunt down the pub, in which we were stymied because there is no pub, or indeed any real town centre. Since Weipa was originally just housing for the mine, it hasn’t grown up around a traditional centre, and has more the feel of a bunch of haphazard suburbs.


SPQ (SINGLE PERSONS’ QUARTERS)


CHURCH, ALSO USED AS CYCLONE SHELTER

There are, however, two clubs. Several people told us that the reason that Weipa has a Golf Club and a Lawn Bowls Club is because these are the two sports that you can perform while drinking.

We randomly chose the Bowls Club, and had a great time and met (and drank with) a large number of interesting and colourful characters.

CRAZY WEIPA LASS BRONWYN AND MOIRA

We also managed to eat some local prawns. This may not sound much of a feat, but all the way up the Queensland coast we have been trying to eat local seafood, only to find that all their catch is frozen and sent to the city. When the local restaurants need fish, they have to import it frozen from the usual sources.

The Weipa Bowls Club had Banana Prawns straight from the Gulf of Carpentaria. They were excellent.

A couple of days later, we got on a tour bus and went to the mine. It was another fascinating trip, not least because it is a far cry from your traditional open-cast mine. Bauxite is near as dammit just lying around on the surface, so all the miners really have to do is come along with a scoop and pick it up. Of course, it is slightly more complicated than that, and they get to use some very big scoops…


TOO SMALL FOR BAUXITE. THIS LITTLE CHAP IS FOR MOVING TOPSOIL


BELLY LOADER PASSING BY WITH 170 TONNES OF ORE


BRONWYN BEFRIENDS THE TRAIN DRIVER

Tomorrow we’re heading out on an extended passage across the sea to Gove. Since the Bureau of Meteorology clearly has no idea about the weather in the Gulf, we haven’t read the weather but we have downloaded some GRIB files which tell us that we will have decent winds during the day but nothing but motoring at night.

Into the Gulf of Carpentaria

There are a number of channels out from the Horn Island anchorage, each leading in a different direction between different islands. There are two that are potentially useful for a south-westerly exit toward the Gulf of Carpentaria, and each has its own collection of interesting tides and currents. There was quite a bit of detailed discussion about them amongst the yachties anchored behind Horn, including a fair bit of third hand local knowledge.

To us it seemed fairly simple. Option One was to fight the notorious Boat Channel with its 6 knot currents and shoals, then to double back through Endeavour Strait with its rocks and shifting sandbanks. Option Two was to slip out of Normanby Passage on a rising tide and to cross into the Gulf using the shipping lane at Booby Island. It didn’t seem like much of a contest.

Low tide was at dawn, but by the time we’d had breakfast and cleared the boat for sea it was closer to eight o’clock and already approaching the top of the tide (the tides are pretty strange around Thursday Island). This suited our planned relaxed start and we accepted the 3.5 knot boost down Normanby and ran gently over to Booby Island, from whence it is a hundred mile straight run down the Gulf to the company mining town of Weipa.

For a while we marvelled at the feeling of travelling southward, a first for this trip. Then we sat back with Harriet at the helm and admired the pale blue skies and azure seas sparkling in the sunshine.

The marine weather forecast had been unusually precise, with 15-20 knots from the southeast and no change expected for the next three days. As we came abeam of the exit to the Endeavour Strait, I noticed a few wispy mare’s tails high in the sky. These are rarely a good sign and, thinking about the very shallow waters in the strait to the east of us, I commented that this would be pretty nasty place to get caught in a storm. Bronwyn replied with something like, “When was the last time that we saw any rain? I can’t remember.”

It was Bronwyn’s watch so I went below to get some rest. After a while I became aware that the bunk was shuddering as if we were travelling at high speed, so I looked out of the saloon window and noticed that we were heeled over so far that the deck rail was in the water.

Up on deck, I found Harriet steering perfectly and Bronwyn looking in some bemusement at the huge squall that was spewing out of the Endeavour Strait and rolling towards us. Hurriedly we shortened sail and Bronwyn got into her life vest and harness while I hid in the companionway under the shelter of the dodger.


THANKYOU, ENDEAVOUR STRAIT

It was quite the squall, with driving rain and 35 knot winds. Bronwyn grinned at me through the water pouring down her face as we hit 8 knots. “At last,” she said, “I’m finally washing off all that sea salt.”
Then a big wave reared up and landed on her head.


EIGHT-KNOT BRONWYN

When we emerged from the other side of the squall, we found that while we we’d been in it, the outside world had gone grey and there were more squalls and storms on every quarter.

I quickly went below to check that everything was battened down and then lay down on the bunk. Bronwyn had waterproofs, safety gear and the helm and by far the safest place for me to be if the boat was going to get a thrashing, was in bed.

Night fell, and the worst of it was over. Bronwyn came below to scrape off the salt, and I went on deck for my watch. The storm had left a legacy of 25 knot winds and lumpy beam seas which made everything a bit uncomfortable. The rain had stopped, but I spent most of my watch under the dodger watching the helmsman’s position disappearing under spray as confused waves slammed into the boat. I was very glad that the wind vane was doing all the hard work.

The sun came up, and we were out of sight of land and becalmed under a motionless blue sky. Flying fish scattered across the surface like little jewelled helicopters, frightened by an enormous swordfish that swiped at them with its bill. A hammerhead shark cruised by, cocking its curious head sideways to see if we were worth eating. Up above, petrels and terns wheeled and dived, taking inordinate interest in the rigging.


WISH I HAD A BIRD BOOK WITH ME

It was all very beautiful, but it wasn’t getting us any closer to Weipa. We fired up the engine and motor-sailed.

Thursday Island

Rather than take our little 3 horsepower tender across the rather unpredictable channel between Horn Island and Thursday Island, we caught the ferry.

TI (as it is known locally) is less than a square mile of tropical island, and very pleasant. The people that we met could be divided into the ones that were working in the shops, who were either grumpy or apparently bemused that we wanted to buy anything, and the people who were not working in shops, who were universally happy and smiling and having a good time. Certainly the pubs were doing a roaring trade. I was particularly taken by the sign outside the Royal Hotel, which as well as offering “the loudest music in town”, issued the stern declaration that it would refuse to serve anybody “with visual armpit hair”.

We visited the very pretty catholic church, and also the island’s graveyard which contains a great many memorials to islanders who died far too young while diving for pearl and trochus shells. There was also a section for Japanese fisherman who had died chasing the same dream.

 

One other curious feature of the graveyard was the popularity of the grave markers as scaffolding for termite nests.

Australian Customs regards TI very much as their front line against not only immigrants but also pests and diseases. Their big launch was continually running up and down the channel, checking out the boats and boarding incoming yachts and confiscating their fresh food supplies.

We had heard that, even though we were not arriving from abroad, we would still need to get a certificate of authenticity from the supermarkets which would allow us to keep our fresh food if we were stopped on the way back to the mainland. There was a colourful but uninformative sign on the ferry dock which seemed to back this up, but when we asked at the supermarket they said that all we needed to do was to keep the receipt. We kept our purchases to an absolute minimum just in case, and then ran into a uniformed AQIS (quarantine) guy at the dock. He told us that we didn’t even need the receipt, but then admitted that he’d only been on the job for a week and really had no idea…

Horn Island

There is a cluster of islands a few hours north of Cape York, out in the Torres Strait and on the way to Papua New Guinea. Although they are part of Australia, most of them have been placed off limits to visitors by the Torres Strait Islanders who live there. In the middle of the group, though, are two islands that we can get to.

Thursday Island is well known in the yachting community because it is a convenient place to stop and rest if you are following the trades from the Pacific to destinations westward. In some ways this is a bit odd, because TI (as it is known) offers few facilities to yachts, and the anchorage is poor holding in a vicious current.

We chose to anchor a mile away across the channel by Horn Island, which boasts a calm and comfortable anchorage and a regular ferry to TI.

After sleeping for most of the day, we ventured out onto Horn Island to look around. It comprises only a couple of streets and seems to exist mainly to service the local airstrip (TI itself is far too small to land planes on).


HORN ISLAND FERRY TERMINAL

We naturally gravitated to the only pub, the Wongai Hotel, for a cold beer. Before long we were chatting to Charlotte the barmaid, and then to Matt the off duty duty manager, and then before not too many more beers we seemed to know everybody in the pub.

As the night wore on we switched from beer to wine, then from wine to spirits. The pub closed, Bob the landlord invited us all back to his pool for skinny-dipping and more beers, and then there was an increasingly blurred round of house visits until finally we found ourselves back on Pindimara mixing cocktails as the party continued.

A great pub, a great night, and I really don’t know how I managed to wake up and ferry Matt and Lucy back to the dock in the tender in the morning. Certainly the crew of the ferry said later that it had been very funny to watch. I didn’t even see any darn ferry.

Rounding Cape York

We had embarked on a four-day passage up through the Great Barrier Reef and out into the Torres Strait. The trade winds were blowing fairly consistently and the weather forecast was good. It was also stinking hot, and we discovered that some of our eggs had cooked themselves inside their shells.

The Great Barrier Reef is much more than the outer ribbon reef that protects the eastern coastline from the open ocean. Inside the enclosed lagoon are tens of thousands of square miles of shallow water dotted by uncountable reefs and islands, many of them still uncharted. The reefs are mostly invisible and lurk just below the surface, so the only way that you can know where they are is to pay diligent attention to the charts.


LIZARD ISLAND TO CAPE YORK

I really have to take my hat off to Captain Cook who sailed these waters with no idea what lay beneath. It is a wonder that the Endeavour only suffered one serious accident here. Bligh also passed through in his open boat after having been set adrift by the mutineers on the Bounty. We passed a few of the islands that he stopped at on his epic journey from Tahiti to Indonesia, a feat that he achieved by navigating entirely from memory.

Those men were giants.

One thing that Bligh and Cook didn’t have to contend with were the ore freighters which continually forge their way up and down the coast. With a good chart, it is possible to thread a large vessel through the reefs in any number of ways, but the maritime authorities have now designated a few specific routes and have made it illegal for commercial vessels to stray from them. On the one hand, this guarantees safe passage for the ships without fear of encountering an unmarked reef, and it means that we always know where they are likely to be, and where they will be heading. On the other hand, the designated channel is often the only reasonable route through, creating pinch points where all vessels, commercial and private, must come together. This is especially exciting at night when you are tired and alone on deck and find that your fragile cockleshell is suddenly the focal point of three enormous cargo ships.


SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT

We planned a route that largely avoided the shipping channels in the daytime, but which used them at night when we could take advantage of their navigation beacons.

The days passed and we settled into shipboard routine. The sailing was generally easy, although the trades tended to blow harder at night. In the day, they sometimes died right off, or we’d be hit by a squall, but we made good time and rounded Cape York at around three in the morning of the fourth day.


ROUNDING THE CAPE

Cape York is the northenmost tip of mainland Australia, and a milestone on our trip. It gave us an immense sense of achievement to have made it all the way up the east coast. We had now turned the corner, and from now on would be sailing into the sunset.

Big Fish

Coming abeam of Watson Island (where Mrs Watson’s body was found, see our previous blog), Bronwyn tossed out the trolling line to see if she could catch us a fish supper. Within half an hour or so, something struck hard. It fought mightily in the distance, but eventually Bronwyn managed to haul it in hand over hand so that we could get a look at it.

We realised that instead of catching dinner, we had hooked well over a metre of something that looked very much like a shark. It was muscular with a flattened body, brown above and white below, a wide mouth like a catfish, and big dorsal and pectoral fins. It wasn’t in any of our fish books, but it certainly didn’t look like anything that we wanted to share our cockpit with, so we decided to let it go.

The only problem was that it had swallowed our one and only trolling spoon, and we needed it back. For almost an hour, Bronwyn played the enormous beast back and forth, trying to tire it enough to get it close to the boat so that I could pull out the hook and let it go. We got so engrossed in the task that I forgot to look where we were going, and got a real shock when I checked our course over my shoulder and found that we were about to T-bone a sand island.

At that precise moment, the wind increased to 30 knots and stayed there, leaving me with only a tiny slot between the edge of the island and a 7-knot gybe. At the same time, the fish was experiencing a whole extra knot of speed, and Bronwyn’s shoulders were aching with the effort of keeping it with us.


NOT SUPPER

A few minutes later, with disaster averted, we pointed the boat into the (suddenly well-behaved) wind and then cursed as the big fish made a sprint under the boat. If it got the line wrapped around the propeller, we would never get it back. However, it seemed to know what it was doing, because the line went slack and the fish swam off, leaving our tackle behind and apparently only slightly exerted by several miles of hard fighting.

We decided to eat canned soup for dinner.

Lizard Island

We woke behind Cape Flattery to a weather forecast telling us to expect 30 knot winds again in the evening and all of the next day. We could have stayed there, but it was pretty dull and not very well insulated from the swell. Lizard Island beckoned from less than 20 miles away, giving us ample time to get there and hide before the blow started again.

When we poked our nose out from behind Cape Flattery, we found a reasonable 20-25 knots which took us to Lizard in no time at all.

We’d heard good reports of the island and were keen to stay for a while to explore. When we arrived at the Mrs Watsons Bay anchorage, we were a little surprised to find more than a dozen cruising boats packed in among the coral heads, as well as a fair sized but inconspicuous resort on the shore.


ROOM FOR ONE MORE?


PINDIMARA AT THE EDGE OF THE REEF

The bay is named after the eponymous wife of a beche-de-mere fisherman who was attacked there by aboriginals while her husband was out fishing. She and a servant and her newborn child escaped to sea in a cast iron boiling tub, and eventually washed up on what is now called Watson Island, where all three of them perished.

The water was blue and crystal clear; we could actually see the anchor on the bottom. The island gave good protection from the developing swell, but very little from the actual wind, so we put out all 70 metres of chain in preparation for the night ahead.

It did indeed blow that night, 30 knots or more, and all the boats got a good thrashing. I kept being awoken by strange sounds that had me running up on deck, but the anchor held. We were a bit tired the next morning, and simply stayed below all day as the wind continued to howl.

The next night was a little calmer, and by lunchtime the waves had died down enough that we were finally able to lower to outboard into the tender and go ashore.

We found a trail leading across the island and through the Pandanus swamps that fill the level ground between the rocky hills.


OFF INTO THE MANGROVES


PANDANUS SWAMP


LOCAL BEACHCOMBER

The trail led to the ‘Blue Lagoon’, an unusual geological formation in that coral lagoons are usually features of reef rather than of continental islands. In the case of Lizard Island it also provides yacht anchorage in calm weather, but those conditions certainly didn’t apply today and nobody had tried it.


THE BLUE LAGOON

There were, however, a few kite-surfers playing around, having sailed around the island from the resort.


JUST PASSING THROUGH

Lizard Island is also famous for having a peak that was climbed by Captain Cook when he was trying to find a vantage point from which he could plan a way out of the Great Barrier Reef. We set off on his trail on the following morning. It was a pleasant clamber over enormous granite boulders, shaded here and there by gums, and the views down into the reefs of Mrs Watsons Bay were spectacular.

BRONWYN AND MRS WATSON THE WAY TO COOKS LOOK

From the top of the hill, we could faintly make out in the distance the dark blue of lurking ribbon reef, and the lighter blue of safe passages. If Cook hadn’t successfully spotted the gap, then he might not have made it back to England and Australians today might all be speaking French. It was very satisfying to stand there on a hilltop on an island in the far Great Barrier Reef, staring out to sea and feeling the connection to the history of our adopted country. Bien sûr.

Back at shore level, we went for a welcome swim in the gloriously clear water, and used the coral sand to scrub away the weeks of sun tan lotion and grime before returning to Pindimara for a rare and welcome freshwater shower.

We’ll definitely be coming back to Lizard Island again. It has genuinely beautiful white coral beaches, a very pretty landscape, some serious rocks, and a warm and easily accessible reef. Wonderful.

But now, it’s time to move on. The Torres Strait beckons.


WE GO THATAWAY!

Entering the Great Barrier Reef

For all that we’ve technically been sailing inside the Great Barrier Reef for several weeks, the reef itself has always been invisibly far out to sea. From here northward, though, the Barrier comes close inshore and is a navigational force to be reckoned with, comprising hundreds of scattered reefs lurking invisibly just below the waves. There is a well-charted and waymarked shipping channel to ease navigation, but it is full of large ships moving ore and containers up and down the coast.


THE NEXT HUNDRED MILES OF REEF

After weeks of dead calm, we’d been wishing for a breeze. Dusk fell, a humpback whale treated us to an aerial display in our wake, and – wonder of wonders – the wind picked up to the low twenties. Our speed increased to 6-7 knots under full sail as we entered the channel. Harriet was doing a fine job of sailing, so while Bronwyn went below to rest, I was free to sit in comfort and idly formulate an elaborate metaphor for the process of sailing through the reef at night.

Imagine getting into your car to drive to the next town. First, however, you spray-paint the windows black so that you can’t see out. Then you tape your mobile phone to the dashboard and log on to Google Maps. You start the engine and put it into gear, and from now on you are completely at the mercy of the accuracy of the map and where your phone says that you are.
You can be reasonably certain that all the streets and intersections are marked, as well as the more obvious light poles and roadside furniture, but you just have to deal with curbs, speed humps, rubbish bins, dogs and cats as you feel your wheels bump over them.
Thankfully there is little other traffic, but you know that if you leave these twisting side-roads and venture onto the highway, you will be sharing the road with fully laden trucks. You also know that they can’t see you either, and that in any case all their brake lines have been disconnected.

As I lay in the cockpit spinning this tale and watching meteorites blaze across the milky brilliance of the starry sky, Pindimara ploughing blindly into pitch darkness at close to hull speed, I thought happily that I wouldn’t trade places with anybody.

The hours passed, and the wind crept up to the mid twenties. Pindimara was now quite overpowered, but there were few gusts and the swells were predictable, so I left the sails up. Harriet the Hydrovane was coping superbly, and tracking better than ever before; I was really coming to appreciate the Hydrovane slogan ‘survive your dream’.

In the early hours of the morning, deep inside the shipping lane with bulk carriers and trawlers passing on either side, the wind crept up into the high twenties and our speed to over seven knots. It was getting decidedly bouncy, so I reckoned that enough was enough and called all hands on deck to reduce sail. To say that the crew tumbled eagerly out of their bunks would be an overstatement, and when Bronwyn did clamber painfully out, she commented that her ‘rest period’ in the bucking bunk seemed to have consisted mainly of two hours of strenuous but inadvertent Pilates exercise.

We quickly reduced sail and got back onto course. As is our usual practice on night passages, we’d gone straight for the main’s third reef, but Harriet soon picked up the pace to a respectable 4-5 knots. I was pretty tired by now so I gratefully put my head down while Bronwyn took a watch.

At a little after 4am I took over again, and immediately got my feet wet as a wave curled over the stern. The swell was now well over 2 metres, and the wind was touching 30 knots. It had also swung around onto the beam, and even with the third reef in, we were overpowered for a reach. The wind was howling in the rigging, and the hull was thrumming and making odd little banging sounds under my feet. We were stll four hours from the safe harbour at Lizard Island, and I seriously considered replacing the main with our storm trysail for the final leg. Instead I chose discretion, and put our tail between our legs and ran for nearby Cape Flattery, which at 260 metres high looked to be big enough to hide behind.

The wind was easier to manage with it behind us, but the wind speed continued to increase and of course we were now surfing down 3 metre swells in the darkness. As the Cape loomed out of the gathering dawn light, I once again roused Bronwyn who navigated us in to shelter between the Cape itself and the chart position of a sunken wreck.

Anchoring for once in the light, we immediately fell into bed and slept until lunch time. Although we were snug in our bay, the 30-knot wind continues to howl over our heads.

Be careful what you wish for.

The Low Islets

We were motoring out of Cairns with no wind and glassy seas. As evening fell it was clear that the situation was not going to improve, an opinion which was backed by the GRIB data that I downloaded which did, however, intimate that things might be better on the morrow.

Rather than burn fuel all night, we checked the chart for likely anchorages and settled on the Low Islets, which are really just a mangrove swamp sticking out of the sea. Naturally we arrived in full dark, to find a good sprinkling of yachts already there – including a large number of unlit tourist punts, which our Lucas cruising guide had warned us about – and found some swinging room at the back in about 12 metres of water on a sand and coral bottom.

Bronwyn magically produced a full roast lamb dinner with all the trimmings. I don’t know how she does that.


LOW ISLETS. PRETTY LOW, HUH?


LOW ISLETS LIGHTHOUSE AND RESORT

In the morning, there still wasn’t any wind, so we idled away the early morning on little chores, grumbling in a mild sort of way about a whole week of still days and dull motoring.

By ten o’clock the promised trade winds arrived as a gentle breeze. We cleared up below and prepared for sea. While hoisting the anchor, we noticed a very large fish taking an inordinate amount of interest in our hull, over a metre long and very powerfully built. Even when we started to motor out of the bay, it kept station with us, and we noticed a big propeller scar just behind the dorsal fin. Perhaps it was used to being fed by tourists.

And tourists there certainly were, in plentiful supply. As we left, they began to arrive in droves on large commercial sail boats of all descriptions, including an enormous cat ketch and a pseudo-oriental junk. All these people were decanted either onto the beach by the lighthouse, or into one of the many fishing punts and jet skis that littered the shore.

Already far from the madding crowd, gentle winds pushed us northward. To our left, the Great Dividing Range marched impressively along the shore line, cloud-shrouded thousand-metre peaks rejoicing in such names as Mount Sorrow, Mount Surprise, and Mount Unbelievable. Captain Cook had a bad time along here, hence also Cape Tribulation, Struck Island, Weary Bay, plus of course Endeavour Reef where he grounded and only got off with quite serious damage which had to be repaired ashore in what later became Cooktown.


MAYBE THERE’LL BE WIND TONIGHT?

Cairns

We’ve stayed in Cairns before and found it be simply a tourist conduit for the Great Barrier Reef, so we only popped in to run some errands and to buy some fuel.


OBLIGATORY BEACH PHOTO

We also needed to do quite a bit of printing for our schoolwork, so rather than anchor in the ‘duck pond’ in the main river we booked a berth at Marlin Marina where we could access shore power. The marina was OK, but not particularly friendly and surprisingly – and annoyingly – lacked any kind of chandlery.

What did amaze us was the shorefront development that has sprung up since our last visit. We had previously found Cairns’ night life to be somewhat dull (always excepting the excellent Kanis seafood restaurant), but now the waterfront is ablaze with interesting pubs, restaurants and cafes and local people having a good time.


BRONWYN AT KANIS

We had a great time at the bar there and met a lot of interesting people, but our chores were done and there was no reason to stay so we cast off and motored back out of the river. Unbeknownst to us, the Alana Rose, which has been a week or two ahead of us all the way up the coast, had returned to Cairns to repair some electronics, so we must have passed within a hundred metres of them on our way out without noticing. That was a shame, because we’ve only ever spoken to Nancy and John via email and it would have been great to meet them in the flesh.

Out in the channel, we discovered that yes, there was still no wind at all. We really wanted to make some northing, so we resigned ourselves to a day of motoring in the stifling heat.

As well as a few whales, which surfaced to breathe but which otherwise didn’t show themselves, we came across another of those yellow swimming snakes, which decided after a while that it didn’t like the look of us and dived vertically downwards.


SWIMMING SNAKE, MILES FROM LAND

Slow Boat to Cairns

Rested and content after our sojourn on Hinchinbrook Island, it was time to put in some northerly miles. We were experiencing no wind at all, but we assumed that it was still blowing out to sea. A few hours later, we poked our nose out around the northernmost tip of the island and picked up a lovely nor’easter that had us flying along towards the next set of islands, the Family Group.

As dusk fell, we came abeam of the resort island of Dunk. We passed into its wind shadow, and never came out. The wind had died completely. I downloaded some GRIB files and found that the forecast was for no wind at all for the next few days. We considered anchoring at Dunk, but felt that we hadn’t really made any progress – Hinchinbrook was still in sight – so we decided to motor for a few more hours and anchor off the Barnard Group instead.

We arrived at the North Barnard Islands after dusk but before moonrise. It was very dark indeed. We slipped into our usual anchoring routine of one of us on deck steering with night-accustomed vision and the other down below watching the GPS and chart and calling up course adjustments. We knew from the chart that we were rounding Kent Island at a distance of a few tens of metres, but we could barely make it out as we slipped between it and an equally invisible breaking rock.

When we got into the reef between Kent and neighbouring Jessie Island, we found another yacht already there, thankfully with anchor lights correctly lit, but there was room enough for both of us.

A mild but continual beam swell made for a restless night, but the morning brought no wind so we took it easy. While standing on deck admiring the scenery, I spotted a derelict old dugout canoe floating towards us. I got out the binoculars (a bird-watching present from my parents when I was about ten; who’d have thought then that one day I’d be using them on a yacht in the Pacific?) to have a closer look, but there didn’t seem to be anybody aboard.


ABANDONED CANOE?

As I watched, the canoe vanished and then reappeared, and I suddenly realised that it wasn’t a boat at all but the tail flukes of a whale hanging head-down in the water. It was pretty shallow, so I can only assume that it was resting with its head on the bottom.

There was still no wind. I attempted to update the blog, but found that I only had one bar of signal. This was an excellent chance to test out the antenna that we’d bought in Townsville. We hadn’t been able to source either a mount or a patch cable to attach it to the modem, but I’d knocked something up using copper wire, aluminium foil, gaffer tape and string. It all worked perfectly, first time, with four bars of broadband. Not a bad upgrade for $100.

While washing up after a leisurely brunch, we felt a faint zephyr of a breeze and realised that there was a distant rain squall marching across the horizon. Guessing that we were on the edge of a small weather system, we quickly cleared the boat for sea and set up the sails for the anticipated sou’wester.


JESSIE ISLAND. NOT MUCH TO HIDE BEHIND

It did come, but it came slowly, drifting us along at only a couple of knots. For the rest of the day the squall stayed stubbornly on the horizon and refused to come closer, so that in order to make any headway we had to sail wing-on-wing in the light breeze. This entails keeping the main sail hovering on the edge of a gybe and flying the jib on the wrong side, which takes a bit of concentration when you don’t have a pole to stop the jib from collapsing. In the end we pulled in the foresail and let Harriet bimble us along at 3 knots on the main alone.

As evening drew in, even that little breeze dropped and we started the motor. We were a little low on fuel, and dislike motoring at night, so we decided to hide behind nearby Normandy Island, one of the Franklin Group. The last dying rays of dusk allowed us to spot a couple of other yachts and some other mysterious floating objects through the binoculars before we arrived in full dark, which was just as well because when we arrived they were largely unlit.

One yacht was showing an anchor light, but a large cat which really should have known better had only hung out a handful of dim little garden solar lanterns. There were also two vessels belonging to the Cruise Franklin company, one with a single solar lantern that ran down its batteries and went out as we watched, and the other completely dark and which we were lucky not to run down.

We had hoped to get some shelter from the SE swell, but in the event it parted around the island into two streams which hit us simultaneously at 90 degrees to each other, rolling and pitching at the same time. We made the best of it until 3 am when it all died down and we were able to get some proper sleep.

The next morning brought the lightest of winds again, and in the end we motor-sailed the last stretch into Cairns. Where are the famed continuous trade winds when you need them?


NORMANDY ISLAND ON A STILL DAY

Hinchinbrook Island

According to the official charts, the bar at Hinchinbrook Island is too shallow for us to cross. However, there is an active three-mile long sugar loader with leading lights across the shoals to a jetty, showing that the channel is regularly used. In addition, we’d emailed Nancy and John on Alana Rose who had recently crossed the bar, and they told us that they’d had good depths at high tide.


BRONWYN AND THE SUGAR LOADER

We had no problems getting across. The leads and navigation buoys took us so close to the sugar loader and the old molasses jetty that it was possible to chat quietly to the fishermen as we glided past.


FISHING OFF THE MOLASSES JETTY

There was still very little wind, so we motor-sailed up the passage (or ‘did a Bob’ as we call it, in honour of another blogger who circumnavigated Australia in a Bavaria with, as far as we can tell, his engine running most of the time). Hinchinbrook Channel is about twenty miles long and allows you to squeeze between the mountains of Hinchinbrook Island to the east, and the coast-hugging Cardwell Range to the west. The Channel is lined with mangroves which provide a vivid bright green contrast to the darker green gums behind, while the stark rock of the mountains looms impressively in the background.


HINCHINBROOK MOUNTAIN FROM THE CHANNEL

After a very scenic day, we pulled off the main channel into Gayundah Creek, one of the many drainage creeks that cut down from the mountains and through the mangroves. The breathless quiet was broken only by the occasional call of a bird or splash of a fish in the shallows. In the background we could hear sporadic ‘clunk’ noises that sounded vaguely like a branch snapping, or somebody slapping the water. We guessed that they were either made by frogs or by air bubbling up from the swamp mud, although we never did get to the bottom of it.


MORNING MIST IN GAYUNDAH CREEK

The many secluded and winding tributary channels just cried out to be explored, so we unshipped the dinghy and spent a happy afternoon alternately motoring and paddling in the shallows.


CREEK, PADDLE

The creeks were teeming with life, from rays and bait fish in the water, to crabs and white herons on the mud, to scintillating kingfishers flashing through the air.

Paddling gently back home, we got a clear view of our stern. One way of spotting a proper cruising boat is to see how much junk is hanging off the back.

2005
2005

2009
2009

Do we qualify yet?

The Palm Group millpond

We rode a nice nor’easter out of Townsville and back past Magnetic Island, where the evening weather made a mockery of our plans for a night cruise and left us bobbing in a perfect millpond sea without a breath of a breeze. We went below and cooked dinner before submitting to the inevitable and starting the engine.

It was extraordinarily dark, but after a while a red moon rose and drowned out most of the stars, revealing the scattered islands of the Palm Group as we threaded our way between them.

Bronwyn had gone below for a nap, and in order to counteract the mind-numbing tedium of motoring, I had loaded some Spanish lessons onto the new ipod that we’d bought in Townsville. It was a pleasant way of passing the time, and nobody was around to hear me declaiming loudly about my requirement for an explanation of the precise route to Santiago railway station.

A little later, my lessons done, I searched through the music files that I had randomly downloaded from my computer onto the ipod, looking for something that would suit motoring by moonlight through a crowded island group in the middle of the night. After a few false starts, I rediscovered some old live Whitesnake recordings, and spent the next few hours cheerfully navigating to the strains of Micky Moody on guitar.

We were heading for the passage behind Hinchinbrook Island, and in order to cross the bar we needed to wait for both sunlight and the tide. There are a couple of islands to the north of the Palm Group that provide convenient anchorages, and we dropped our pick in a mirror-smooth bay behind Fantome Island.

We had a great night’s sleep. In fact, the weather was so still that we could probably have slept floating on the open sea. In the morning we woke easily to the alarm and began motoring the final few hours to the southern entrance to Hinchinbrook Passage.

We like Townsville

We spent several days enjoying the cafes and pubs of Townsville. The Palmer Street restaurant district is just behind the TMBYC marina, and from there it is but a short stroll to the Flinders Street East pub and club circuit. We didn’t have a single bad drink or indifferent meal in Townsville. We became regulars at the Townsville Brewery, situated in the impressive old General Post Office building and home to seven or eight enormously impressive boutique beers, and Cactus Jack’s which offers excellent margaritas in its rooftop bar with views out over the town.


TOWNSVILLE BREWERY

The other big draw is The Strand, which is the area backing Townsville’s long beachfront. The town planners have done a marvellous job here in creating something akin to La Rambla in Montevideo and many other latin countries. The beach remains pristine, but is now backed by a wide boulevard dotted with palm trees, sculptures, memorials, and playgrounds for young and old alike.


THE STRAND

One of these playgrounds is a fountain designed for playing in, complete with water cannons and a big bucket which periodically soaks everybody in the area.


WATER PARK

The Strand is delightfully uncommercial. Some low-rise hotels sit unobtrusively far back across the road, and the occasional cafes and restaurants are tucked away in secluded corners so as not to detract from the sweep of the bay. Bronwyn’s favourite was Juliette’s, a gelateria that makes its own gelato on the spot and which does cracking business well into the night.


BRONWYN AND PATRICIA AT JULIETTE’S

As well as the beach itself, sections of which are protected by stinger nets to guard against jellyfish, The Strand also boasts a pool at each end. The Tobruk pool was used for training by Australia’s olympic swimmers in the sixties (the entrance hall alone is well worth a visit for its collection of photos from that period), and the Kissing Point Rock Pool is an artificial swimming lagoon designed to provide safe swimming in the stinger season.


KISSING POINT ROCK POOL

We get the feeling that Townsville is destined for good things. It has not escaped the world’s current financial problems; for instance, the central mall was closed down and scheduled for major prestigious redevelopment, but this project has been put on hold so that a large part of the centre now sits idle and locals have to travel to the suburbs to do their shopping. All around, premium apartments have been built – neither too high nor too offensive, more kudos to the town planners – but we understood that hundreds of them stand empty awaiting buyers who never came. On the other hand, the town’s prosperity was never derived from tourism, and the constant flow of mineral, agricultural and livestock wealth continues to flow from the North Queensland interior to the various loaders and refineries to the south of the town.

Day followed perfect day, and we began to think that we would never get around to leaving. It was nice to be stuck somewhere because we wanted to be, instead of – as has happened so often on this trip – being trapped by storms. In the end, though, we realised that if we were going to get around the northern coast of Australia before the advent of the cyclone season, then we needed to get moving.

But we really like Townsville, and will return.


GOODBYE, TOWNSVILLE. WE’LL BE BACK.

Magnetic Island

After picking up Patricia from Townsville airport, we sailed across to nearby Magnetic Island for the weekend. Captain Cook named it “Magnetical” because he believed that it was affecting his compass, but it seems that he was mistaken. This can happen to the best of us; see for instance this harrowing tale from the extremely experienced crew of our friends on Pelagic.

The island may lack magnetic anomalies, but it does have some beautiful bays and walking tracks. The best anchorage is in Horseshoe Bay to the north, offering good protection from the SE trade winds, so we dropped anchor there for a few days while we explored. Although it was a busy bay, there was plenty of room for all, and there was no appreciable swell despite continuing strong trade winds.


HORSESHOE BAY

A couple of thousand permanent residents are scattered around a number of small settlements connected by a circular bus route. Apart from one notable exception (a younger chap presumably new to the job), the bus drivers tried to make the route more interesting by keeping the accelerator pedal firmly to the metal at all times. They would maintain power until a few metres short of a bus stop, whereupon they would stamp heavily on the brake. Passengers quickly learned that it was necessary to wait for the bus to stop bouncing on its springs before daring to stand up to get off.

The other mode of transport on the island is the Mini Moke. I had no idea that there were so many of them left in the world, but this may be because they are all now collected in this one spot. Most are for hire, fulfilling the function of the golf cart on Hamilton Island, being usually piloted by slightly inebriated tourists making their way home from the pub.


WHERE THE MOKES WENT

Tourism is the only industry here, but Magnetic (‘Maggie’ to its friends) has escaped the resort frenzy that has claimed Hamilton. Most of the accommodation is low key and comprises individual houses or cabins rather than hotels. The ferry to the mainland is the island’s lifeline and the key to its prosperity, as can clearly be seen in Picnic Bay which used to be a thriving commercial quarter but which is now largely a ghost town because the ferry terminal moved around the corner to Nelly Bay.

There are no such problems at Horseshoe Bay, which is the jewel in the crown and whose few but excellent beachside bars are presumably adequately serviced by visiting yachties. The Barefoot cafe and art gallery is particularly relaxing, and an honourable mention must go to the ‘Noodies’ Mexican restaurant next door for the opportunity to sit margarita in hand while watching dugongs in the surf and people messing about on the beach.


MESSING ABOUT ON THE BEACH

The island also boasts a number of easy walking trails. Perhaps the most spectacular is the Forts Walk which hits you with a triple whammy. Firstly, the views of the surrounding shorelines are superb. Secondly, the path takes you up to a historically interesting WWII gun emplacement, and lastly the trail is lined with koalas.

LOOKING DOWN LOOKING UP


LOOKING IN


LOOKING OUT

We were sad to leave Horseshoe Bay when it was time to take Patricia back to the mainland, but the weather co-operated to give us perfect sailing conditions back down around West Point to complete our circumnavigation of the island.


SIX-KNOT READING


PATRICIA TAKES COMMAND

The Breakwater marina notwithstanding, we had thoroughly enjoyed our initial impression of Townsville itself, and wanted to stay on a bit longer when when we brought Patricia back to town. We decided to try out the Townsville Motor Boat and Yacht Club marina, which is down Ross Creek in the centre of town. Access is via the commercial harbour shipping channel, so we nipped in ahead of an incoming bulk carrier and found good depths all the way.

After the usual hunt for our berth, we tied up to a warm welcome by Mark, the marina manager, who called a taxi for Patricia and went out of his way to make our stay as enjoyable as possible. The pontoons were all sturdy and new, the club’s facilities were being completely refurbished, there was a lively bar on site, the other marina residents were universally friendly and interesting, and to top it all the berths were considerably cheaper than at Breakwater.

Leaving Pindimara in safe hands, we happily set off to explore the town.

Breakwater Marina

We had never intended to stop in Townsville. However, our friend Patricia had flown out to join us for our exploration of nearby Magnetic Island, and we needed to pick her up and take her back to the airport afterwards.

Townsville has several marinas, and on our first arrival we randomly chose The Breakwater which seemed at first glance to give easiest access to the sea. The chart showed dredged depths of 1.1m which should have allowed us in at most points of the tide, but luckily we rang ahead and found that in fact the channel was really only 50cm deep.

We’d arrived only a few hours before high tide, so we hung around hove-to until it was deep enough and then motored in. In retrospect this was a wise decision, because when the tall ship Joshua C followed us in a few days later, they found themselves dredging their own channel with their keel.

It seems to be a point of honour among marinas that they never adequately signpost their berths, and Breakwater was no different. We endured the usual stress of searching up and down the narrow and crowded channels of an unfamiliar marina, until eventually we located our assigned berth. Because of the combined effects of wind, tide and surrounding boats, you usually only get one chance of getting cleanly in to a berth, so Bronwyn swung the bow round in a fast turn while I stood on the foredeck with a handful of pre-prepared lines. As the little slot twisted into view, I jumped onto the pontoon and prepared to tie off and help warp her in, only to find that the wood was so rotten that all the cleats had fallen out. Looking around for any sort of projection that I could use, I shouted “It’s up to you!” to Bronwyn, who executed a flawless parallel park while I hunted around for something to tie up to.

Most of Breakwater Marina was like that. The pontoons were all falling apart, the staff were distinctly strange, and the fee structure was impenetrable and changed from one day to the next, not only in terms of dollar amount but also with the tax charged. After a few days, we went to the office clutching a handful of mis-matched invoices and asking for clarification. We were told that although we had requested a 10m berth, “none were available” and so they had “put us in a 12m berth” and charged us accordingly. This is gibberish, because the berths are largely all the same and it is the length of your boat that should determine the fee. It wasn’t just us; we heard later that the Joshua C was also charged randomly changing amounts with each passing day. The marina also tried very hard to keep our key deposit when we left, by conveniently “forgetting” to keep a note of our card details so that they were unable to credit our account.

Patricia arrived, and we gratefully left to explore Magnetic Island.

Cape Bowling Green

Cape Bowling Green is, presumably, so named because it is as flat as. It’s not really a cape at all, more of a long sand spit enclosing a shallow bay. We had no intention of stopping there, because it’s so flat that it is little use as protection, and because a number of people had warned us that it is a pretty uncomfortable anchorage.


ROUNDING THE “CAPE”

Nevertheless, after a nice day’s sailing before 10-20 knot winds, we found ourselves coming abeam of the Cape with gusts in the mid-thirties and swell that was big enough that we were surfing down it. Clearly last night’s gale was coming back to blow again, and we decided that we really didn’t want to be out in it.

The wind itself wasn’t too much of a problem, as even in 30 knots we were comfortably cruising at 6-8 knots under full sail, but controlling gybes while surfing is tricky enough in daylight, and we didn’t fancy tiring ourselves out at night, especially if the developing swell was going to get any bigger.

We tucked around the end of the sand spit and anchored in 4 metres with plenty of rode and an anchor alarm (we’re learning…). There was nobody else in the enormous bay apart from a couple of humpback whales who were gently cruising around in the shallows. I guess they like to get out of the swell as much as the next mammal.

The wind went straight up over 30 knots and stayed there. Although we were sheltered from the big sea swells, we were still far enough downwind from the sand spit to experience some pretty big waves as they built up across the shallows, and Pindimara began to do a passable imitation of a nodding dog. Still, it was all on the bow and pitching is nowhere near as bad as rolling. We didn’t exactly sleep the sleep of the just, but by the morning the wind had died down enough to move on. The sailing conditions were just about perfect, and we had a wonderful cruise into Townsville.

Gales at Cape Upstart

With the dawn came the promised gale. We wrote off the morning and did some advance passage planning instead. At around lunch time, a few yachts crawled into the bay and dropped anchor, much closer to shore than us. They seemed to be much more scared of the wind than of the shallows. Presumably it was a bit rough out there.

The wind died to a more reasonable 20-25 knots over lunch, but leaving then wouldn’t have got us anywhere useful in daylight hours, and we were pretty convinced from our detailed poring over the GRIB files that the night was going to get gnarly. Still, we had bread to bake and schoolwork to do, and a new batch of novels that we’d picked up in Bowen, so Townsville could wait.

The afternoon died in a sky of lowering maroon clouds shot through with fiery red flashes. With sunset came the real winds. They came up over Cape Upstart and slammed down onto the boat at over 30 knots. Pindimara reeled with the punches. Like any keeler she is designed to point into wind, but the sheer force caught her on the bows and lifted her up and over, first to one side and then to the other, whipping her almost broadside on before the anchor chain hauled her back so that the wind could slam into the other side. This continued on relentlessly, time after time, two or three times a minute, for hours on end. The anchor chain stretched out, but looked as if it would hold.

The view from deck was somewhat alarming, but down below it was surprisingly calm, if you ignored the demon howl of the wind in the rigging and the frenzied hum of halyards vibrating like violin strings above.

We thought it prudent to consult the Bureau of Meteorology website, but (in common with many of our Queensland anchorages) the only internet connection that we could get involved standing on deck and balancing the laptop on either the dodger or the targa frame. With the boat thrashing from side to side and the laptop threatening to tear itself out of my hands and fly away, this was not the easiest task, especially when we started to get waves over the bow. I saw enough of the forecast to tell me that conditions would probably improve overnight, and went below.

With nearly 40 metres of chain out, we would usually expect Pindimara to swing through a wide arc, and could set our new anchor alarm accordingly. In this strong wind, however, she was dancing on the end of her stretched-out chain and not swinging at all, so we set the anchor alarm for a much smaller radius. After a couple of trips around the deck attempting to identify and tie down all the more obvious bangs and rattles, we went to bed. The gale continued to rage, but our bodies were quite tired from endlessly rebalancing our bodies and so we fell quickly asleep.

In the middle of the night, the anchor alarm went off. I was instantly awake and ran onto deck, but then started laughing; the wind had gone, and we were still firmly anchored but drifting aimlessly around the chain. We reset the alarm radius and went back to bed.

Orange Bloom

The anti-swell kedge-anchor worked! We had a beautiful undisturbed nights sleep, while the other yachts in the bay were obviously rolling badly.

Strong winds were forecast for the next few days, but they looked like reliable trades and we thought that we could quickly run the hundred mile trip to Townsville in a night and a day. We set off optimistically in light morning breezes, expecting things to pick up later. The sou’easter stubbornly refused to materialise, and we spent a couple of hours drifting along marvelling at the orange bloom on the turquoise sea.


ORANGE TIDE


CLOSE UP AND PERSONAL

According to some news reports (thanks, Virginia) these particular blooms are caused by Trichodesium and Townsville is waiting in some trepidation for their arrival, as it seems that they wash up on the beaches and start to rot.

Eventually our speed tailed off to less than three knots, which is our usual sign to reluctantly start the motor. After this, we made good time until late afternoon, when the wind finally started to blow, and we hoisted the sails and were screaming along at 6-7 knots. Thinking idly about dinner, I unwrapped our brand new trolling line (replacing the old one that mysteriously snapped) and began to unwind it overboard to see if we could snare our second ever fish. The spoon had barely hit the water when the reel was nearly snatched out of my hand, and before very long we’d landed another mackerel.

By the time we’d filleted, cooked and eaten it (yum) the wind had died again and we were becalmed. The promised gale was clearly somewhere else entirely, and we didn’t have enough fuel left to motor all the way to Townsville, so rather than bob around in the dark we dropped the anchor in four metres of water in Shark Bay, under the lee of Cape Upstart.

With seven times rode out and an anchor alarm, we settled down to some schoolwork before being distracted by some loud splashing outside. Shoals of Long Toms were leaping out of the water around the boat, and we found that we could trigger mass flights by shining the spotlight onto them.

Tired out from all this excitement, and hoping for wind on the morrow, we went to bed and drifted off to sleep.

Some New Tactics

We had a terrible night on the Bowen mooring although just for a change it was not the fault of the mooring itself, which behaved impeccably. Following last night’s grounding, we kept waking up at the slightest sound or movement and running up on deck to check the surrounding anchor and navigation lights. Even in our dreams we were still listening out for the ‘thump’ of a grounding keel.

At dawn we gave it up as a bad job and began clearing away the debris of the rescue attempt. The decks at this point were cluttered with ropes, chains and bridles, and liberally spattered with bottom mud. The interior looked as if a bomb had hit it after the boat was purposely knocked down to free the keel.

The wind continued to blow, and we realised that we weren’t going to get peace of mind until we went somewhere else where the memories weren’t as fresh. Fortunately Queens Bay was only around the corner, which had the advantage of being spacious and uncrowded but the disadvantage of being renowned for its beam swell.

At anchor again and with most of the afternoon still ahead of us, we worked out a few modifications to our nightly routine. Although our ship-board GPS comes with an anchor alarm which warns you if you stray too far from a pre-set position, we have only rarely used it because the only way of powering up the GPS is to turn on all the navigation systems at once, which unnecessarily uses up a lot of valuable power. I rewired our GPS onto its own circuit so that we can fire it up on its own for use as an anchor alarm. It is on now.

Secondly, we had time and space to try an idea that we have been discussing for some time. The problem with swell is that it doesn’t always come from windward, so that the boat (which always tries to face into wind) takes the waves on the quarter or on the beam, which produces an uncomfortable rolling action. We reasoned that we could hold our bow into wind by putting out a kedging anchor at the stern and hauling it in until we were angled into the swell.

We’ve never seen this idea discussed anywhere in the literature. However, given our success with the kedging anchor during our grounding, we applied our newly honed skills and tried it out. Our new tactics worked perfectly, and while we can see that all the other boats in the bay are being thrashed abominably, we are pointing directly into the swell and are only experiencing a pleasant rocking motion. Hopefully we’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep, our first in three days.

Dragging Anchor: A Hard Day’s Night

Overnight the wind changed, putting us on a lee shore, blowing over 20 knots with a following 3 metre swell. Obviously we should have noticed and changed anchorage, but we were sleeping the sleep of the just and didn’t notice that our anchor was dragging. The first we knew about it was the sound of our keel impacting the ground , not something that I ever want to hear again, although I was to hear it many times that night.

I tried to reset the dragging anchor, but found that it was wrapped in a blue nylon and rubber sheet, presumably somebody’s discarded wet weather gear which had caused it to slip. We were by now wedged on the muddy bottom alarmingly close to shore. After running uselessly at full throttle – we weren’t going anywhere – the engine overheated and had to be shut down. A quick check revealed that the seawater coolant tubes were dry, presumably mud had clogged the sail-drive intakes. The night was pitch black. The depth sounder was reading 0m under the keel. The GPS showed that we were 600m from where we had originally anchored.

I started to kedge, which means that I carried our spare anchor out in our dinghy, with waves breaking over my head, dropped it somewhere vaguely close to where I wanted us to be, and then climbed back on the yacht to haul us along the anchor rope by hand. Then repeat. It’s back-breaking work, and after moving the yacht a little over ten metres, we stuck fast and I could not move us further. I left the kedge anchor in place because it was stopping us from drifting further inshore.

I called for assistance on the emergency Channel 16, but none of the relevant authorities were listening, which was not surprising given that it was the middle of the night. Eventually I was answered by Reef Watch, a commercial organisation related to the coal industry, who passed on our message to Townsville Water Police who passed us on to Voluntary Marine Rescue Bowen. A sleepy VMR crew arrived on a small catamaran shortly after dawn and tried to tow us off, but failed because we were completely stuck.

We agreed to wait for the now thankfully rising tide. Pindimara was bobbing, but seriously listing to one side and slamming into the ground with every wave. Tony from neighbouring yacht Loyalty arrived and coordinated the second rescue attempt, using his own dinghy attached to our masthead spinnaker halyard to drag us even further over until our gunwales were in the water, thus releasing the keel from the mud. Alarmingly for him, his outboard kept cutting out, which meant that Pindimara would stand up and lift both him and his dinghy vertically out of the water until he could get it started again. Meanwhile Matt from VMR and myself worked on the increasingly wet and sloping foredeck to kedge us out on our two anchors while the little VMR rescue boat attempted to tow us out on a line. Eventually we came unstuck, and since our engine was disabled and the local harbour was too shallow for our 2m draft I requested that we be towed to one of the many private mooring buoys in the area.

Through all this time, Bronwyn had been staying out of the way below in the heaving, canted saloon. When I came below with our rescuers to dispense coffee and whisky, we were astonished to discover that she had baked fresh bed for everyone.

Once secure, with the assistance of Tony from Loyalty we cleared our blocked intakes and started our engine. We could engage forward gear but not reverse, so I guessed that we had a problem with our propeller and dived on it to remove several metres of chewed-up rope which was jamming our propulsion.


STRING, STRING, WONDERFUL STRING

Finally, we seemed to be in the clear. It had been a long morning.

During the process we’d met the crew of not only one, but two nearby schooners, Tony on Loyalty, and Annie and Robyn on Joshua C .


JOSHUA C AND LOYALTY

HELPING TO BRING LOYALTY TO ANCHOR

It seemed reasonable to spend the evening celebrating.


ROBIN, BRONWYN, TONY, ANNIE ON JOSHUA C

Bowen

It was very shallow squeezing between Gloucester Island and the mainland – only a metre under the keel – but we got through just before some nasty looking weather. There were some moorhttp://www.virtualreinhard.com/wp/bowen/ing buoys bobbing around close in to the shore where we intended to anchor. They said ‘Eco Resort’ on them but there was no phone number and the resort didn’t respond to VHF, so we picked one up. As it happened, the squall passed us by, but the bay remained calm so even though it was only lunchtime, we decided to hang around until the next morning.

What a lovely calm mooring it was! The buoy was well behaved and didn’t bang against the boat at all – or if it did, it was made of nice soft plastic and we probably wouldn’t have noticed. Mooring makers, take note! It is possible to make your buoy out of something soft and squishy instead of something hard and sharp that rings like a bell on impact.


GOOD BUOY

There was little swell and we scotched our plans of an early start and had a luxurious long lie-in instead.

It was a long slow calm trip over turquoise calm seas to Bowen, where we dropped anchor and took the dinghy in through the astonishingly shallow channel (we didn’t dare try it in the yacht) to get some provisions. On the way there, we’d noticed a catamaran with ‘Jailhouse Steak House, Launceston’ on the side, which we’d seen at almost every marina on the way up, so on the way back to Pindimara, loaded to the gunwhales with provisions, we chugged over and said ‘Hi’.

Don, who had built his yacht in Tasmania and is sailing her up to Darwin (Her actual name is Cisco; the steak house had once sponsored him in a race), was glad to see us and we spent a lovely evening drinking wine and shooting the breeze, after which he kindly illuminated our yacht with his spotlight so that we could get home, because we couldn’t see anything in the dark.

Back on board, we put on some music and tucked into some welcome fresh meat and vegetables, followed by our first gin and tonics in months. The swell blew up a bit, but it was all on the nose and so just made the yacht buck a little, and didn’t disturb our sleep.


GLOUCESTER ISLAND, FROM BOWEN

We decided to stay for another day so that we could explore Bowen itself. The town is small, pleasant and friendly, and adorned with striking murals on every spare wall. It seems that there is an annual mural festival, and new ones are continually being added, usually commemorating the history of the area.


MIND THE GAP

We had a very pleasant time hunting them all down, along the way acquiring a great many bags of shopping, including torches and lamps and fishing gear and an eclectic selection of books from the local charity shop.

We also checked out the local pubs and ended up at the one that seemed to hold the most promise, the Grand View. Sure enough it didn’t take too many pints before we were chatting to some prawn fishermen, and the night degenerated into a pleasant blur.

There was no wind forecast for the following day, so we pottered gently around the boat, reading our new books, having a bath in the cockpit, and generally being nice to our hangovers.

The wind got up in the afternoon, so we’ll be moving on tomorrow.

Hamilton Island

Hamilton is a resort island currently owned and run by the Oatley family corporation, and there is very little room there for independent enterprise. This gives the whole place a slightly surreal and unearthly flavour, perhaps a bit like if Disney owned the Isle of Wight. The road system is tiny, but everybody drives around in golf carts, which are provided to staff and hired by the day by tourists.


RUSH HOUR

Most of the restaurants and cafes are stamped with a lowest-common-denominator sameness, and it is slightly strange to keep meeting the same staff serving in each cafe.

There is no beach on the island, so they made one by bringing in sand from Whitehaven and dumping it on top of rocky drying mudbanks in Catseye Bay. The effect is a bit strange if you look closely, and is anyway somewhat marred by the large amount of floating pumice that has since washed ashore… you can’t mess with geology.


CATSEYE BEACH FROM A DISTANCE


WE PLAY TOURIST AT CATSEYE

On the other hand, Hamilton Island is a pleasant enough place and everybody seems to be reasonably happy. Even the nightclub bouncers are friendly. Payment of your somewhat outrageous marina fee allows you to use any of the resort facilities, which is just as well as the official marina shower blocks aren’t really up to scratch.

We were also lucky enough to be introduced to residents Pam and Bill (thank you, Nicky) who made us very welcome indeed and showed us some sides of island life that we would not have otherwise seen. And we drank a lot of wine with them. Oh yes.

We had only really intended to stay on the island for a couple of nights while we did some chores at the post office and laundry, cleaned the salt off the boat, and overhauled the toilet system (hopefully for the last time). However, we had such a grand night at the steak house, pub and nightclub that we overstayed the third morning, and anyway Pam and Bill had invited us over to dinner, so…

Completing the Whitsunday Circuit

We woke after a comfortable night under Shaw Island to find turtles browsing the reef, and a whole school of 40 cm batfish cleaning the bottom of the boat.


BATFISH

After breakfast it was time to close our circumnavigation of the Whitsundays Group and return to Hamilton Island.

Good things and bad things happened on our trip up through the Whitsunday Passage. There was a fair wind, but a quartering swell. We didn’t get any bites on the trolling line, but we did get a spectacular aerial display from a young humpback whale and her calf. Then, as we were admiring the picturesque lighthouse on Dent Island, something enormous must have sneaked up and eaten not only our hook and spoon, but also half of the metal trace line. All we got back was a few frayed metal ends.

The forecast was for southerlies, but we were getting northerlies, so we decided to drop anchor in the protection of Refuge Bay in Nara Inlet. It was a little crowded but we found room to squeeze in and anchored in millpond conditions as the wind raged overhead.

We woke up at 4 am to give Mikayla a taste of night sailing. The southerly was finally blustering through as we raised sail under the stars, and Mikayla took us up to seven knots toward South Molle Island as the first touches of dawn tinged the sky, topping it off by baking a bread loaf that was crusty perfection itself.


SEVEN-KNOT NOY


DOUBLE CONE ISLAND. VERY STRANGE.

You’re not allowed to go ashore at South Molle because it is a private resort, but we anchored just off the cliffs for a leisurely brunch before tackling the fast tack across the somewhat wild strait to Hamilton Island. Dreading another night on the evil buoys, we’d booked a night in the marina, who actually had a valet waiting outside the entrance to guide us in. I suppose that is the flip side of paying nearly $100 for one night’s berth.

Then… showers! Blessed unlimited streams of piping hot water! Followed by a leisurely beer as we watched the golf carts bimble up and down the waterfront, and then an enjoyable fresh fish dinner at the rather nice Mariners restaurant. Not a bad end to a great little holiday. Next week we start cruising again.

Mikayla sails us to Lindeman Island

Our next plan was to go back to Lindeman Island and to have another attempt at exploring it, after abandoning our previous attempt due to an uncomfortable swell.

Lindeman lay a few hours to the south. Mikayla did the whole of the day’s sail, from motoring off the anchor to putting up the sails, steering all the way to Lindeman Island, and then dropping the sails and the anchor when we got there.


THE CREW, HARD AT WORK

There really wasn’t much left for us to do apart from laze around on deck.


THIS IS THE LIFE!

We were running low on fresh food, so we put out the trolling line to see if we could catch our second ever fish. On the way through the fast-running Solway Channel we hooked something silver, but didn’t have too long to get excited about it, because it jumped off what turned out to be a blunt hook. We didn’t get another bite all day, and made a note to get out the sharpening file later that night.


THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

Because the wind had come round to the north, we headed for the other side of the island from our previous visit. We wandered around on the beach there hoping to connect with the national parks trail that we’d seen on the northern tip, but the plant growth was so thick that we couldn’t get more than a few tens of metres inshore.

Giving up on walking, we explored in the dinghy, and found a pebble beach where we spent a happy afternoon looking at stones and coral.


GEOLOGIST AT WORK

Exhausted after our gruelling day, we returned to the boat, where Bronwyn knocked up a fine repast from dried and canned ingredients. No more fresh food until we get to Cairns.

The night was reasonably comfortable but the forecast gentle northerly turned into a proper storm as the promised ridge came through early. The boat got thrashed about a bit, but the swell stayed on the bow so we weren’t overly unhappy.

The ridge brought with it a southerly change, so instead of continuing our exploration of Lindeman, we decided to hop over to nearby Shaw Island where there was convenient shelter. Before we left, though, Mikayla and I went back to the pebble beach and collected enough spheroidal rocks in different colours to make up a set of boules, along with a chunk of white coral to use as a jack.

Once ashore on Shaw, we put them to the test, and had a fine boules tournament up and down the beach.

THE LADY HAS BALLS PETANQUE!

Whitehaven Beach

We spent a gentle day circumnavigating the northern half of Whitsunday Island, finishing up at the popular Tongue Bay. A line of yachts was wedged in against the south-eastern shore, but as we approached the pack broke up and many of them left. Quite a few of these seemed to be old J-class racing yachts, apparently being run by the tourist resorts as they each had over a dozen people aboard.


MIKAYLA BRINGS US IN TO ANCHOR

Those of us that remained suffered a mild but unusual swell for the rest of the night. I went up on deck a few times to see if I could work out what was happening, but although throughout the night the wind and tide had us facing almost every point of the compass, on every point we were getting a mild broadside swell. Very odd.

After breakfast we popped around the corner to the famous Whitehaven Beach, renowned home of the finest white sand in the world.


WHITEHAVEN BEACH

It was a glorious day. We anchored a couple of hundred metres from the shore and then swam in. The sand was almost painfully white, and the consistency of flour. We amused ourselves by following nicely defined animal tracks in the dunes, and watching the numerous sting rays foraging for food in the shallows around our feet. I’ve never seen so many rays being so bold. They weren’t bothered by us at all, and one big one was perfectly happy for me to wade alongside it as it swam slowly up the beach.

Apart from some clusters of resort folk over a mile away at each end, we had the beach pretty much to ourselves. After swimming back to the yacht for lunch, everything changed; power boats and jet boats roared up to the shore and discharged dozens of people with cool boxes, and a helicopter flew in to deposit another load. Tenders came in from two super-yachts out in the bay, one of them an astonishing mirror-finished ketch which must have been a hundred feet long. It was time to leave.


POLISH YOUR BOAT, SIR?

There was no wind at all, but the forecast was for a northerly change, so we motored over to nearby Hasleton Island and anchored up against the reef in Whites Bay. There was nobody else there, which made a nice change, although a small liveaboard showed up later. The skipper commented in passing that he’d been hoping for some peace and quiet, and then anchored so far away from us that we could barely see him in the gathering dusk.

Standing in the dark with the moon still below the horizon, we noticed intermittent flashes of light in the water. This wasn’t the usual phosphorescence of tropical plankton but something different. We spent a happy half hour or so hanging over the rail with a spotlight trying to work out which of the myriad creatures was making the light. We narrowed it down to either the millimetre swarms of zooplankton, or the yellowish thumbnail-sized fish that were feeding on them while simultaneously either laying eggs or defecating, or the finger-sized silver-blue fish that were coming up from below to feed on everything else.

Satisfied that we had in fact no idea what was going on, we settled down to a quiet evening of baking, eating, and cribbage.

Cid Harbour

Having picked up Mikayla from the airport, there was no real point in staying amongst the resort high-rises of Hamilton Island. We were all tired of being tossed about on the mooring in the continuing gale, so we headed north to see if we could find a quieter spot in Cid Harbour on Whitsunday Island.


MIKAYLA TAKES COMMAND

The availability of anchorages in the Whitsundays is to some extent ruled by the presence of bare-boat flotillas. Cid Harbour is famous for its calm anchorage, but is also very close to the charter base at Hamilton Island. We had assumed that, since it was Friday and most charters begin and end on a Saturday, Cid Harbour would be packed with holidaymakers enjoying a final night. There were about twenty boats there when we arrived, but there was still room for us to squeeze into Sawmill Bay where we had beautiful flat calm and an undisturbed night’s sleep. Thanks to John and Nancy for suggesting it.

Following on from our discovery of Alan Lucas’ misnaming and misrepresenting a bay a few days ago, we began to suspect that he hadn’t actually been to Cid Harbour either. Although it is indeed a fine anchorage, Lucas talks about showers and barbecues, and there is certainly nothing of the sort there, and no sign that there ever has been. However, turtles and dolphins siam all around the bay, and there are four coral beaches to explore.


MIKAYLA TAKES THE OLD GUY OUT FOR A SPIN

We also found a short bush trail leading from the main beach to nearby Dugong Inlet, and half way along this we noticed a minor tributary trail heading straight up the hillside. A passerby told us that this led, after one and a half hours, to the top of Whitsunday Peak (434m) from whence, he said, there were marvellous views of the the island.

Naturally I was champing at the bit to climb it. The girls were more inclined to sit on the beach, so they went for a swim at Dugong while I set off. It was quite a climb, and obviously didn’t see much traffic, but the trail was reasonably obvious and the vaguer parts had been unobtrusively marked with surveyor’s tape.

After an hour of hard climbing, I came across a scattering of dome tents hidden amongst the trees. A little later the trail improved markedly to a neat path, and I began to hear the sounds of voices and tools. Half a dozen park rangers were working on the trail, painstakingly chopping out roots, marking the edges with a border of stones, and where necessary fitting steps by half-burying large boulders and packing them with dirt. They were glad to stop for a chat, and told me that they had been there for about forty days, and were expecting to finish in another month or so. When they were finished with this particular trail, they would set up camp on another part of the island and start work there. They had been living and working in the Whitsundays for at least a year. It struck me that this would be my perfect job.

RANGERS AT WORK A YACHT SAILS OUT TO SEA

The views from Whitsunday Peak were spectacular. I could see our anchorage in Cid Harbour on one side, and across to Hamilton Island on the other. A vast expanse of islands and coral seas stretched to and merged with the horizon. It really is a lovely piece of paradise.


VIEW FROM WHITSUNDAY PEAK

Back down at the beach, Bronwyn and Mikayla had had an enjoyable if slightly cool swim, and had attracted the attention of a hungry crow and a pair of young goannas, not to mention some members of the tourist subspecies of homo sapiens. One particular group arrived after the arduous 1100 metre trek from Cid Harbour and rang their yacht to send a tender round to pick them up. They assumed that Mikayla and Bronwyn were tired and resting up before the laborious trek home!


MIKAYLA AND FRIEND

By the time that I had clambered back down to sea level, we had the beach to ourselves and were all glad of the chance of a good wash in the clear waters.


THE NOW OBLIGATORY ‘DANIEL CRAIG’ PHOTO

Suitably refreshed, we headed back to the boat and fired up the barbecue for a nice veal roast before sleeping for a full eleven hours.

A Tirade Against Mooring Buoys

A fast run to Hamilton Island to pick up Mikayla, with whom we will spend the next week circumnavigating the Whitsundays. Conditions were a bit gnarly, with washing-machine swells and 30 knot gusts, but it meant that we got to Hamilton pretty quickly and picked up the biggest mooring rope from the biggest mooring buoy we have ever seen. The rope was so big that it wouldn’t fit around our deck cleat, so I had to quickly make an extension for it.

The moorings are on the opposite side of the channel to Hamilton airport, up against neighbouring Dent Island, and the wind was still blowing nicely. It was a bit of a wild ride across the channel in the tender.

Wandering around waiting for the plane, I was bemused by all the holidaymakers decanting from nose-to-tail flights and piling into golf carts. There were golf carts everywhere! When Mikayla had arrived and we were walking back to the marina where I had tied up the dinghy, we were passed by streams of them on their way to their hotels. We got some strange looks; it’s the Club Med set, and they obviously don’t get many pedestrians in Hamilton.

The water in the channel to Dent Island was still running pretty fast on the way back and we got a bit of spray into the dinghy, but the scariest thing was watching Pindimara bucking around and flinging from side to side in some huge surf. Now we could see why they’d over-engineered the mooring buoy. Poor Bronwyn was inside trying to cook lunch.

On the way over, we’d noticed that one of the smaller free public buoys had become available, and that the water was much calmer mid-channel, so we let go our marina buoy and motored over to the other one, not only making everything so much calmer, but also saving ourselves an overnight fee.

But… there are two ways to construct a mooring buoy.
One is to attach a rope to a heavy weight on the bottom. At the free end of the rope, you attach a small plastic floating ball. In order to moor, you pick up the floating ball and bring it aboard, tying it off, and thus attachig the yacht to the heavy weight on the bottom of the sea.
The other construction method is to attach a large floating buoy to the end of the rope, and then to attach a second rope to the top of that buoy. In order to moor, you pick up the end of the top rope and bring it aboard, but the buoy stays in the water.

The first method is simple, effective, has few parts and is trouble-free. The second method is more complicated to build, and if there is any tidal flow at all, then the big buoy will spend at least a third of any 24 hour period banging against the hull. Naturally, almost every public mooring is of this second type.

I spent much of the night at Hamilton Island fending off the buoy and creating ever more ingenious cradles of fenders and ropes as it repeatedly smashed into our soft fibreglass hull with thunderous booms. Every now and then the whole buoy vanished beneath the surface and scraped its way laboriously along the bottom of the hull before popping up on the other side and starting to bang there. Stupid thing. It is quite possible to hate an inanimate object.


EVIL INCARNATE

Lindeman Island

We had a pleasant enough sail to Lindeman Island, and then some amusement trying to find an anchorage that would protect us from the SE wind and the persistent SW swell. Lucas’ cruising guide was a bit vague, with some clear inaccuracies on his chart, but we decided to try his recommended anchorage of Boat Point anyway.

Once there, we took the dinghy to shore and found a delightful little beach, very muddy but full of life – hermit crabs and snails underfoot, cockatoos and lorikeets above, scattered with attractive mangroves.


THE MUD FLATS AT BOAT POINT, LINDEMAN ISLAND


SOME OF THE WILDLIFE IS A LITTLE STRANGE

A National Parks trail clearly led around the island, and although we didn’t have time right then – the tide was coming in and the dinghy was quite far out on the mud flats – we thought that it would be great to come back here later in the week.


FETCH THE DINGHY, WOMAN, AND BE QUICK ABOUT IT


PINDIMARA SUNSET

The anchor set well and the land gave us protection from the wind, but the SW swell continued to roll in and throw us around. It wasn’t very pleasant. We took to sleeping crosswise across the cabin, which was much more comfortable but not ideal as there is only just enough width.

Early next morning we motored round to the other side of the island to try to get out of the swell. We found a suitable bay to eat breakfast – toasted bagels and cream cheese, fresh avocados – but the sea was still disturbed even though not overtly swelly. Some of this was likely attributable to the 20+ knot winds.

Goldsmith Island

We bade a leisurely goodbye to Mackay Outer Harbour, and ran gently up the coast before a light breeze. It was a beautiful day and a relaxing cruise in a turquoise millpond sea.

At one point we saw a big old turtle, drifting backwards in the current, his shell completely invisible under a waving portable reef. Bronwyn saw another snake. An enormous eagle flew out from a wooded island to see if we were edible. And those were the day’s excitements. Very serene.


THE TURTLE JUST AFTER WE STARTLED IT

We had planned a route that would take us through three island groups, all with suitable anchorages. We just kept going to see how far the wind would take us, with Harriet steering and the human crew lounging around on deck reading books.

We got as far as the Sir James Smith Group, where the cartography is delightful. Rather than the usual dull names that litter Australian charts (Black Rock, Flat Island), some unsung hero had waxed lyrical on the theme of “Smith”. Thus Goldsmith Island is flanked by the Ingot Islets, Specie Shoal, and Bullion Reef. Similarly, Blacksmith Island is accompanied by Hammer, Bellows, Forge, Pincer and Anvil Islands. Off to the south of Tinsmith Island is an islet with the name of Solder. And so on. Very cute.


SERENITY

There were only two other yachts in the main anchorage at Goldsmith Island, but there was a lot of reef lurking beneath the surface and it was hard to see if there was enough swinging room. In any case we couldn’t get our anchor to bite, so we moved around to the north west and got it down in the next cove up. We’d had sou’westers all day, and it was now blowing from the north east, but since the two arms of the cove had both of these directions covered, we thought that we’d be fine.


ALL PACKED AWAY. HOW ABOUT A SUNDOWNER?

It was quite comfortable until the middle of the night when we mysteriously got a developed swell coming in from the north west, broadside on and very uncomfortable. Shortly after dawn it got noticeably worse and the wind start to howl in the rigging, so not even stopping for coffee we quickly upped anchor and went back to the shelter of the first anchorage, where the anchor bit first time. While we were manoeuvring about, the depth sounder showed some very deep holes in the sea bed, which may have accounted for our problems on the previous night.

As we poured the coffee, a sou’easter blew up at close to 20 knots and dark storm clouds rolled in overhead. There was no internet reception, but I plugged in the satphone and got a forecast for 20-30 knots and rough seas. We changed our mind about exploring the island by dinghy and made breakfast instead.

Mackay

We popped in to Mackay on the mainland to provision for our upcoming sojourn in the Whitsunday Group. The harbour is completely artificial and there isn’t anywhere to anchor, so we reluctantly rented a berth at the marina.

It has to be said that the marina is excellent. It is not unreasonably priced, and is clean and secure. It is handy for a selection of waterside restaurants and a pub, and there is a bus service into town for shopping.

After a welcome shower to rinse the thick layer of salt out of our dreadlocks, we checked out the restaurants. After some weeks of cruising, most of out fresh supplies had run out and we urgently felt the need for fresh food. There were a number of restaurants in different styles from cafe to pub steak to haute cuisine, but since all the prices were the same – $30 a main – we plumped for the best, the very highly recommended Latitude 21 restaurant underneath the Clarion Hotel. The food was excellent, the service was superb, the ambience was just what we needed to ease us back into civilisation.

We had lost track of the days, and anyway had forgotten that there are things like Sundays when the shops aren’t open, so the next morning we found ourselves on the sabbath with a day to kill. We spent most of it catching up on paperwork and then headed off to the Sails pub, where we had a very good time, met a number of interesting people, drank far too much and ate far too little.

Shopping in Mackay was a bit of a shock. It was the school holidays, and the mall was packed. Who’d have thought that there were so many people in the world? Still, nursing our hangovers over fruit juice and coffee, it gave us a chance to see what the burghers of Mackay are like, and the word that sprang to mind was: prosperous. It’s a good looking and manicured town full of good looking and manicured people. From the bus we also notice that there were a lot of infrastructure projects in full flow, so business seems to be booming. Certainly there were a great many bulk carriers outside the port waiting to get in.


PARK YOUR TANKER, SIR?

The supermarket was a real eye-opener. After the rather sad and wilted selection of fruit and vegetables at the Woolworths in Gladstone, the Mackay branch of the same store presented us with a stunning array of beautiful fresh produce. It was hard to stop ourselves from filling our trolley with more than we have room for.

We’re now provisioned up, watered up, and stuffed to the gunwales with fresh meat, fruit and vegetables. We’ve had a brief fix of night life, and even managed to hose some of the salt off the decks. Tomorrow morning we’ll refuel, and then it’s back out to sea.

Our first fish

We were anchored in Whites Bay, Middle Island of the Percy Isles, hiding from a surprisingly strong nor’wester. The forecast was for another change, this time from the south, blowing a healthy 15 knots directly into Whites Bay some time between 22:00 and 04:00. The dual attraction of a decent sailing wind and getting out of the bay before the swell started, saw us going to bed early with the intention of leaving as soon as the southerly change came through.

The change woke me at 03:30, and seemed to contain rather more wind than forecast, up to 20 knots inside the protection of the bay. Still, the developing swell was rapidly making it too choppy to sleep so we decided to stick to the plan. After a quick breakfast on deck to acclimatise our eyes to the darkness, we motored out of the pack of sleeping yachts and into the Percy Islands tidal race which was, for once, running with us rather than against us.

The southerly wind was working against the incoming tide to build some pretty big waves, and we had a bouncy time getting out of the group. Once out into the open sea, the wind ramped up to over 30 knots, officially gale force. With triple-reefed main and our cruising jib, we soon found ourselves creaming along at over 9 knots. The log records a maximum speed of 9.54, the fastest that we have ever gone.

VIDEO: GALE FORCE (4.2 Mb)

Since we were moving in a straight line, we thought that we may as well throw the trolling line over the stern. This line has a long history. Several months ago, Bronwyn decided that she wanted to learn how to catch fish, and we made a deal that if she can get one on board, then I’ll kill, clean and fillet it. Since then she has been chatting up fishermen and pestering tackle shop owners in an effort to find out the easiest way of catching our supper. It was surprisingly difficult to get a straight answer. Most of them said “Ah, you just throw a line over the back and you’ll catch something. No worries”, but when you actually tried to pin them down for some specific advice, such as “What line? Which lure? How deep?” they would often as not change the subject or offer wildly divergent advice.

My theory is that since it is regarded as quintessentially Australian to be born with a fishing rod in one hand and a barbecue spatula in the other, it is not manly to admit that you’ve never done either one or the other. Certainly when I announce that I have never fished in my life, I attract pitying stares and an embarrassed shuffling of feet. Much better for a woman to do the asking.

Bronwyn did eventually manage to find a couple of guys who seemed to know what they were talking about, and by May had put together a dream kit of all the tools necessary to catch, land, and process a small tuna. Since then we’ve tossed the gear over the back whenever we thought about it, but never got a sniff of interest.

Back to the story. There we were, screaming along in excess of seven knots in gale force winds, alternately burying first the gunwales and then the bow into mountainous swell. Naturally this was the moment that I glanced back into our foaming wake and saw a large fish tail-walking at the end of our line.

We had repeatedly memorised all the necessary steps for landing our first fish. After making sure that the hook is firmly set, we were supposed to stop the boat. Yeah, right. The obvious solution was to heave-to, but in these conditions this simply meant that we were making six knots backwards instead of nine knots forwards. Still, the important thing was that while hove-to we could forget about steering for a while and concentrate on the fish.

With four pairs of hands we managed to land a rather spectacular Spanish Mackerel, some two thirds of a metre long and weighing about seven kilos. We were quite impressed!


BRONWYN’S FIRST FISH

Now we had to quickly regain control of the boat before we ended up back in the Percy Isles; in the excitement we had gone backwards for over four miles. Back on our beam reach, we shared our bucking and heavily slanted cockpit with a washing-up bowl full of salt water and a very large and slippery dead mackerel. By the time we reached the Guardfish Cluster, our feet were soaking wet with a lingering fishy smell, but our mackerel was intact and, thanks to a swaddling tea-towel, relatively cool.

As we approached the first turn inside the Cluster proper, I again glanced out of the stern and spotted a young humpback whale practising a series of launches out of our wake. Beautiful.

Once we were safely anchored between the drying shoal and the rocky reef, I hauled out our shiny new filleting knife and reduced the mackerel to four enormous fillets.


SPANISH MACKEREL FILLET

Three went in the fridge, and the fourth we had for lunch, gently heated in a little olive oil. It was sweet, succulent, and absolutely delicious.

BRONNIE THE FISHIE BRONNIE THE CARNIVORE

Middle Percy Island

We had intended to move on from South Percy Island the next day, but the forecast was for a light nor’wester and our route was to the north west. Tacking for hours into a light wind held no attraction, and we didn’t really have enough fuel to spare to motor it, so we decided to stay another night at South Percy. With only light winds for the previous few days, I had become a bit complacent about the weather. Although I knew that the nor’wester would blow right into our little bay, I just assumed that it would maintain the same negligible wind speed that we had become used to, and in this assumption I was supported by the GRIB file that I had downloaded (via satphone: no internet out here) that showed a predicted wind strength of a barely perceptible 3 knots.

As the evening wore on, the nor’wester began to blow a good 10-15 knots and brought with it an uncomfortable swell. By the middle of the night we were being thrashed around as Pindimara bucked like a bronco, being held side-on by the tide to an ever-fiercer north westerly swell.

We decided to wait til dawn and then run for cover in Whites Bay, a SE-facing shelter under nearby Middle Percy Island. In fact I was up well before dawn, washing up and generally tidying away, so that by the time it was light enough to see, we were ready to go. The sideways swell was getting really rough, and it wasn’t possible to stand upright without hanging on.

Whites Bay was only a few miles to the north, and we could see that there was a single yacht already at anchor there. When we were about half way across, a whole stream of yachts appeared around the south western corner of the island, all heading in our direction. We guessed that they had been caught out by the wind change while anchored on the western side of the island, which is the usual tourist destination because of the world famous “A-Frame” cruisers’ meeting place on the shore. This was later confirmed by Jace on Eveready who said that there had been a bit of a sundowner at the A-Frame the previous night, and by the time they’d all got back to their boats, the wind had already changed and nobody felt up to moving on.


VIEW TOWARD SOUTH PERCY FROM MIDDLE ISLAND

Once we had all anchored, Bronwyn and I went over to the shore for a walk. There was a dune which I inevitably climbed, and which proved to have an interesting crust a few metres from the top where the steep surface had been hardened to the consistency of concrete before being lightly sprinkled with fresh sand. Very slippery.


IT’S A LONG WAY DOWN

We didn’t explore very far into the island, though, because we intended to go to bed early and leave in the middle of the night.

An island of our own

There were two other yachts close in to North West Bay on South Percy Island, but we anchored farther out in our usual 10 metres, which put us a good half a kilometre off but still out of the tidal race that runs between South Percy and nearby Middle Island to the north. After a meal and a rest, we chucked the tender over the side to go take a look at the beach. We considered rowing, but were aware of the three knot tidal rip and invisible reefs, so we clamped on the outboard instead.

We spent a pleasant afternoon pottering about on the beach, after which Bronwyn sat down and sunned herself while I clambered about on the rocks and erosion gullies behind the tide line.

BEACH BABE ROCK DUDE


BEACH DUDE


“INTERESTING” EROSION GULLY

Over breakfast next morning, we noticed the other two boats sailing out of the bay. It was only when Bronwyn said “Great! Now we have an island of our own!” that I realised that this was what I had been waiting for. Great Keppel had been nice, and I had been expecting to make use of the extensive hiking trails around it, but when it came down to it I’d been happy that we had gone snorkelling instead. Now we had the whole of South Percy Island to ourselves, and I had seen on my brief expedition the day before that there were no trails or paths at all. Perfect for exploring!

We packed some vittals and took the tender over to the headland. We landed on a different beach which showed a few footprints and signs of human passage. Behind it was a pebbled gully full of flotsam, mainly timber and empty coconuts that must have floated in from Polynesian or Indonesian vessels, although there was an interesting pile of pumice on the high tide line.

Above the gully, though, the green hills beckoned. I started the long climb to the top, and found it hard going. The tufty grass was ankle deep and crunchy, hiding rocky voids and small clumps of prickly pear cactus. This was excellent news, as it seemed to me pretty unlikely that most people would persevere, and I could continue my daydream of exploring a deserted tropical island.


PRICKLES


OUR ISLAND

As is the way with these things, the top revealed another higher peak beyond, and then a third one. From there, though, I had a great view of the surrounding ocean and islands, and of the bay far below where Pindimara sat patiently at anchor.


OUR HOME

There were no trails or any other signs of human activity. I jumped up and down and waved to the little dot of Bronwyn far below, who years ago decided that I am a loony and best left alone in the presence of climbable peaks.

Later that day we decided to explore North West Beach, which looks like a great anchorage on the chart but which is described as having a difficult-to-see reef line. We went at low tide, in the tender. The tides here are four metres, and so at that time of day we could clearly see parts of the reef that you would normally only see when snorkelling or scuba diving. It was a curious feeling to be first motoring, then rowing, and finally walking along towing the dinghy through gardens of soft coral scattered with small fish and giant clams. I had to be very careful not to put my foot on anything that might get damaged, but it was an amazing experience.


YOUR CARRIAGE, MA’AM?


O SOLE MIO

As the tide comes in over a reef, fish that have been hiding in rock pools or beneath the sand emerge and head out into deep water. We saw a few schools of fish milling around in the shallows waiting for their opportunity, and then suddenly realised that we were wading through the school of sharks that were waiting for them. We’re still not sure what species they were, but they were a metre long, brown with orange black-tipped dorsal fins, and very wide. They obviously detected that we were much bigger than them because they stayed at least five metres away, but it was still a weird experience to be paddling through a school of big and clearly very hungry sharks.


VERY BAD PIC OF SHARK

Keppel Islands to Percy Islands

Before we left Great Keppel, Sue and Steve showed up on Tenacious D. Sue and Steve were not only our neighbours when we were preparing for our voyage back at Gibson Marina, but they were also the only long term cruisers that we really knew, and as well as being lots of fun they did a grand job of putting up with all our stupid questions during our final months of preparation. It was great to catch up. We had a bit of a yarn over a pancake breakfast and then they had a lunch date on another boat, so we hoiked up the anchor and set off to the north.

We had a long way to go, and there was very little wind forecast, but we managed to bravely leave under sail. It may have been slow, but it was peaceful. We noticed that the water was sparkling, and dipped a bucket in to see the diatoms and flagellates swimming about. We followed a lunch of chilli tuna salad on freshly baked bread with a small bottle of champagne and some lime jelly.


LIFE’S PRETTY GOOD

As the sun set prettily over the Queensland hills, we heard the dull thump of army munitions. This whole coastline is sometimes taken over for army training, and we’d heard on the grapevine that they were using it today. This meant that our intended half-way anchorage at Port Clinton was out of the question, so we were intending to travel all night to the Percy Islands.

The military zone extends quite far out to sea, so we had to arrange our course to avoid it. Pretty soon the wind died completely, and we spent the rest of the night chugging up the military boundary line under motor. Given the forecast, we felt pretty lucky to have had the sails up for as long as we did.

Bronwyn went below and I stood the first watch. Since there was very little swell, steering was pretty easy even though we were motoring, and I found that with the aid of a head torch I could steer and read a novel at the same time. The watch passed pleasantly swiftly, punctuated by the occasional yellow star shell drifting over from the military manoeuvres on shore.

Bronwyn took over from the small wee ones until pre-dawn. A sea fog threatened to roll in from the east, but it was low on the water and left the sparkling stars bright and clear above. Thankfully the fog never developed.

I was back at the helm just before dawn, which revealed another clear blue sky but still no wind. South Percy Island was in sight all morning. Most cruisers visit Middle Island rather than South, but after staring at it for so many hours we thought we decided that rather than simply steering around it, we would stop for the night.

There was quite a lot of debris in the sea, tree trunks and large branches, as well as a substantial quantity of what seemed to be an orange algal bloom. Half way up the eastern coast, and over a mile from shore, we encountered a large yellow snake swimming by. It was a metre long and looked a lot like a python rather than a sea snake, and had tied the end of its tail up in a knot, presumably for buoyancy or for balance. It stopped and regarded us with interest when we slowed and did a circuit around it, and then began once more swimming strongly out to sea. We wondered how it could see where it was going, with its head that close to the water.


JUST PASSING BY

At half past two in the afternoon, we dropped anchor in a delightful sandy bay in the north eastern corner of South Percy Island.

Gladstone to Great Keppel Island

As the sun rose above the loading docks, we slipped quietly out of Gladstone. There are three routes out of Gladstone Harbour. The main shipping channel to the south – the way that we had come in – would be quite a dogleg for a northerly trip. The Narrows is a shortcut direct to our destination of Keppel Bay, but is dominated by a six mile drying stretch called the Cattle Crossing and you have to be absolutely sure that not only will the tide give you enough depth to get through, but that you have enough power to fight the tide all the way to the other side before the water disappears again. We chose the Northern Passage, a middle way, saving us about 20 miles on the shipping channel but with only a short drying area right by the bar.

Since the drying area is at the far end of the channel, we had to time our trip up to cross the bar at high tide. This meant that we were fighting the incoming tide all the way, but luckily it was only running at a knot or two. We were motoring up at about half tide, which was just enough to cover the sand banks and reefs. We had the somewhat surreal experience of navigating up thin unmarked winding channels that we could see on the chart, but to the naked eye we were zigzagging meaninglessly across an apparently unobstructed lake of unbroken water.

Bronwyn was steering, I was navigating down below.
“Thank goodness for GPS” I thought as we approached a particularly thin section. Just then, something crashed and we lost all our navigation systems. Great. I called course headings up to Bronwyn from memory while frantically changing batteries in the GPS and rebooting both computers, one as backup in case the main one didn’t recover. Everything came back online just as we needed to do a sharp turn to avoid another invisible sand bar. The computers behaved from then on but, thankfully, we had now entered a marked ferry channel and the leading lights took us between a couple more reefs and out into the open sea.

We were free! We grinned like maniacs and rushed to put the sails up. Gladstone wasn’t a bad place, but it had hung over us like a black cloud because we were forced to stay there. The freedom that we’d started to take for granted had disappeared, and the lack chafed our souls.

No matter. We’d done what needed to be done, and now we were on the move again.

It was one of those perfect sailing days. We were close hauled and flying along at 6-7 knots, but the sea was calm and smooth and so it wasn’t uncomfortable at all, just pure fun. We chose to steer manually all the way.

VIDEO: BEATING INTO WIND (2.7 Mb)

We could take advantage of the NW winds all the way up the coast, but we knew that the final westward section toward Great Keppel Island was going to be a long hard beat into wind. Halfway through the day I fired up the computer and downloaded the GRIB files for the next three days. Technology to the rescue! GRIB files are meteorological data that can be overlain onto a suitable digital map. In this case, they showed that at about four in the afternoon we could expect a westerly change, and then another one to the south-west in the evening. This was perfect! It meant that rather than taking lots of time to tack back and forth, we could just gently curve around with the wind until we arrived.

And that was exactly how it happened. After 13 hours and 58.6 miles (an average 4.5 knots, much of the latter part against an evil 1.5 knot current, so the boat was really travelling much faster than that) we dropped anchor under the Milky Way and a crescent Moon, next to Second Beach on Great Keppel Island.

After a restful sleep – how wonderful to feel the boat rocking beneath us again! – I stood on deck under the rising sun and marvelled at the blue sea, the blue sky, and the peaks, beaches and islands scattered around us. What a beautiful spot.

We had intended to spend the next day hiking over the island, but first I had to repair the electric anchor winch which had given out the night before. I quickly traced the fault to a lazy wiring job at the sharp end; I mean, if you were a marine engineer installing a wiring connection at the end of the boat that spends a lot of time immersed in sea water, wouldn’t you try to waterproof it a little? Apparently not. Luckily I had my trusty gas-powered soldering iron and spliced in a new section.


DANGER. ELECTRICIAN AT WORK

Standing on the bow, we realised that the water was so clear that we could see the anchor. This reminded us that we hadn’t been swimming in ever such a long time, so we decided to snorkel over the reef at the end of the nearby beach instead of going for a hike.

Since we’d arrived at night, we had anchored a prudent distance from the invisible shore, and daylight revealed that we were a good 600 metres out. We donned masks and fins and set off. Half way there, Bronwyn got stung in the face by a jellyfish, but after that things started to look up.

At one end of the beach is a secluded clearing marked by a rather bizarre sculpture consisting of forty or more beach-combed floats and buoys suspended with string from a large tree. Next to it is an unusual swing and an enormous hammock fashioned from a fishing net. We spent some time lazing in the hammock in the sun, chatting idly about this and that, before putting on our fins and splashing out to the reef.

It was less a reef and more a collection of rocks fallen from the island, but it was home to as relaxed and varied collection of fish as you would find on a scuba dive. We spent a happy few hours paddling around before beginning the long swim back to Pindimara. Just as we set off, we were passed by a shoal of pike barracuda each almost a metre long. Spectacular.

Gladstone

The tourist board brochure claims that “Gladstone is a gourmet paradise…creating flavours you will remember long after your holiday”. We are not convinced. Apart from pub food (with an honourable mention to the Queens Hotel Steak House – see previous blog entry), and a scattering of rather second rate cafes, there are only a handful of real restaurants in town, and most of those are boarded up with ‘for sale’ signs on them. The list of ‘restaurants’ in that same tourist brochure even includes the McDonalds… and mysteriously fails to mention the one diamond in the rough, the stunningly good Rock Salt in Roseberry Street. When we showed up without a reservation on a weekday evening the place was packed, although they were perfectly happy to light up a gas heater and let us sit outside on the patio. The service was cheerful, the wine list and prices acceptable, and the food very good indeed. We’re counting our pennies to see if we can justify another visit before we leave.

We found a self-guided pamphlet tour of the town, which was only two kilometres long and took in all the historical attractions. Unfortunately, most of it reminded us of a similar tour that we once did in Shanghai, where we would find ourselves looking at a car park and admiring a small plinth stating “Here stands the former site of the former Korean embassy”. The main highlight is the climb of 111 steps alongside the Rotary Club artificial waterfall to the top of Auckland Hill (“Spectacular… multicoloured vistas of the city… magnificently preserved buildings from times gone by”), from which vantage point you get a good view of the mineral loader, the coal loader, the power station, both bauxite refineries and the smelter.

GRAIN SILOS                                               FUEL AND HYDROXIDE

This encouraged us to take a number of the free ‘Industry Tours’, in which we were ferried every day by bus to a different plant site. The Queensland Alumina refinery was an interesting nest of pipework and towers, stained either bauxite red or alumina white depending on which part of the process was in progress. We weren’t allowed out of the bus or to take photos, but we did get to see behind the scenes that are not normally visible to the public. Bronwyn was particularly struck by the large quantities of junk lying around everywhere, and we couldn’t help noticing the phenomenal amount of welding and repair work that was going on. When there are hundreds of thousands of kilometres of pipework carrying hot caustic soda, I imagine that equipment doesn’t last very long. On the way in, a sign proudly proclaimed “Days since last serious injury: 2”

We also visited the Boyne Smelter, where the alumina is reduced using astonishing amounts of electricity to make aluminium ingots, bars and billets for export mainly to Asia. Once turned on, it’s a bad idea to turn the smelter off because the molten metal will set irreversibly in the crucibles, so there was a continual tale of keeping up the supply of electricity and making sure that they’ve made enough anodes to replace the ones that burn out every few days.

Another local industry is the RG Tanna coal loader that is the source of the black dust all over our deck. They take coal from bottom-dumping train cars, blend it, and then load it into bulk carriers at a rather amazing 6000 tonnes per hour. Our bus driver took us right out along the loading pier, where coal was pouring into ships from a conveyor moving at five metres per second… a barrage of statistics, but an interesting and enjoyable tour.


PASSING A CALCITE STORE ON THE WAY TO THE COAL LOADER

And now the week is over. I have sent in my final assignment, and Bronwyn has completed her final exam. We are free to go! There are nice SW winds forecast for the weekend. We’re fuelled up, watered up, provisioned up. I’ve hosed the coal dust off the deck (again). We’ve washed and polished and vacuumed, charged all our rechargeable stuff using shore power, finished colour coding the anchor chain, and reinstalled our tow generator. I’ve even – I think – fixed the ventilation problem in the head.

We leave on the dawn tide.

Gladstone Marina

Usually when we need to stay at a marina, we rent a swing mooring and commute to land by dinghy. A mooring is usually cheaper and more private than a berth, but still allows you access to the marina’s showers, laundry and other facilities. It lacks a fresh water tap and shore power, but those are not things that we regard as at all important, being largely self-sufficient with our large water tanks and wind and solar generators.

On this occasion, though, our greatest concern is revising for and taking our exams. Mine are conducted online, so I use my computer at the local library, but Bronwyn has had to arrange for an invigilator at the nearby campus of the University of Central Queensland. To make it all easier, and to ensure that we have the necessary power for late night study, we have committed ourselves to three weeks plugged in to a marina berth.


PINDIMARA SULKS ON A BERTH

Gladstone Marina is operated by the Port Authority, whose main job is to handle the freighter traffic servicing the local coal loader, smelter and gas plant. The marina is overshadowed by the coal loader which continually lays down a thick layer of black dust while beeping loudly to let you know that, even though you might have gone to bed, they are still working. The marina is also in the middle of a refit, so there are labourers disassembling and reassembling the pontoons to the sound of power tools and local radio, backed by a loud and smoky dredger running at all hours of the day and night.


THE MARINA AND COAL LOADER

Where there is a marina, there is usually a sailing club. On the whole, we’ve been completely unimpressed with all the sailing clubs that we’ve visited so far, but we persevered with the nearby Port Curtis Sailing Club. In their favour, they poured Guinness in pint dimple jugs. Actually, that’s probably the only thing in their favour. The beer was poor and overpriced, the interior lacked any kind of atmosphere, and we didn’t manage to engage anybody in conversation at all. The food was… perhaps I should merely draw your attention to the sign in the gents lavatory. While extolling the advantages of paying your club membership fees, this poster tantalisingly exhorts: “Your membership entitles you to discounts at our infamous restaurant”. Enough said, I think.

We had a far better time at some of the local pubs, particularly at The Grand Hotel, which is always friendly and welcoming. One night we found ourselves drinking there with some coral trout fishermen celebrating their return from a four-week stint, who later took us to The Queens, which we had previously avoided because of its unprepossessing exterior but which turned out to be a lively and fun local haunt, full of interesting characters. I was also served one of the best steaks that I have eaten in Australia. It actually came ‘blue’ as ordered, and I could cut it with a fork. Superb.

I joined the locals that night in their tipple of choice, Bundaberg rum and coke, after which it all got a bit messy. Much, much later, Bronwyn and I set off on the kilometre or so walk back to the marina, and somehow got completely lost, even though the town is only a few minutes across. Luckily Bronwyn flagged down the driver of a passing petrol tanker, who took pity on us and drove us home.

Most of the boats here at the marina are long-term liveaboards. This doesn’t mean that there are lots of cruising sailors to talk to; on the contrary, it’s more like living in a waterborne trailer park. Most of the denizens seem to live on enormous self-built trimarans, all trailing great strands of coral and mussels testament to their complete and permanent immobility.


PERHAPS THEY ARE STARTING A CLAM FARM?


I’D BE FASCINATED TO SEE HOW THIS RUNS

While hosing off a couple of weeks of coal dust from Pindimara’s deck this afternoon, I noticed that even our neighbour’s inflatable dinghy had nearly a metre of coral beard hanging from its underside.

While waiting for service at the sailing club, I idled away some time by reading their notice board, even perusing the race standings (it was a very long wait). I have now seen most of the boats listed, including all those with high handicaps, and almost all of them are trailing festoons of coral and shellfish. I’m not sure exactly who is kidding whom.


THIS YACHT IS HIGH IN THE CLUB STANDINGS

We’re here in Gladstone for a very specific reason, but I must admit that life at the marina is slowly driving me stir crazy. The rhythm of our day has all changed. Because we have permanent electrical power, we no longer go to bed at dusk and wake at dawn. Instead, we laze around in the evening watching videos and reading books, and wake up whenever our neighbours start to make too much noise in the morning. I’ve also lost touch with the weather. Usually I feel in tune with the boat, waking reliably whenever the tide changes or whenever there’s a change in the wind. At sea, at anchor, or on a mooring, the boat feels restless when there’s a change in the air. Here at the marina berth, I have no idea what is happening out there. The wind gusts or the sun comes out with no warning, and I feel disconnected. Hah, listen to me. We’ve only been at sea for three months, and already I sound like a hoary old sea dog.

But the exams are going well. Only one more week to go.

Kalgoorlie

We were living on our yacht and had recently arrived in Gladstone, Queensland, when I needed to get to a field course in Kalgoorlie, Perth, clear across the other side of Australia. Since both Gladstone and Kalgoorlie are mining towns, we reasoned that I would be able to get a reasonable connection. We looked into buses, trains, and cars as well as aeroplanes, but flying was by far the cheapest option, and when I boarded the planes they were awash with fluoro shirts of mine workers changing shifts. We arrived at dawn, and I got a good look at the landscape. I had expected it to be completely flat and red, and indeed it was, but I was surprised to note that it was lush with free-standing gum trees, marching in green rows to the horizon.

Red earth, green plants
Red earth, green plants on the Eastern Goldfields

As we came in for landing, we flew over a number of open-cast pits. We didn’t fly over the Super-Pit, because overflying that enormous cavity was banned after the updraft caused an airliner to crash a few years ago.

KCGM Superpit, Kalgoorlie
KCGM Superpit. For scale, the tiny yellow truck on the far right is about 10 metres wide

Since I only had about twenty kilos of luggage, mainly text books, I decided to hike in rather than catch a taxi. I like to approach a new town slowly so that I can get a better feel for it, and I certainly needed to kill some time before anything opened, so I set off. It was strange to wear shoes again after all these months, and in addition they were brand new steel-toe work boots that I had been trying to break in on the beach, which must have looked quite amusing.

Made for walking
Made for walking

It was a very pleasant walk, and I was amused to see that most of the horizon at ground level is taken up by the artificially straight lines of mine tailings. I passed some pricey-looking new residences with expensive cars outside, and a number of scrubby little trailer parks, some of them glorying under names like “your golden nugget holiday home”. When I finally arrived at my hostel, the Kalgoorlie Backpackers, I found it to be clean and presentable, and after a brief snooze on a sofa I was shown to my room for the week. Most of the days and indeed the evenings were taken up with field trips, study and revision, but I did get out to see the town once in a while.

WA School of Mines
WA School of Mines

Caution!
Caution!

Most of the buildings date from the late 1800s, and the town is very well preserved. Clearly the mine companies bring in a lot of money. The schools look nice, too, although all of the shops had stickers in the window announcing that they would not serve children during school hours. There are enough shops and small restaurants to make it interesting, as well as a good number of pubs.

The York Hotel
The York Hotel

The streets are very wide indeed, apparently a hangover from the days of horse-driven road-trains, and the council has recently gone to the effort of replanting all the central reservations and borders with native flora. The only problem with native grasses is that they aren’t good to walk on, so where pedestrians might be expected to pass, they had laid down astroturf instead of concrete. This might sound a bit strange, but it provided a nice contrast with the red mud and somehow didn’t look out of place at all. When I’d been searching the internet for a hotel, I had noticed that several of them offered “brothel tours” as a standard service. I wasn’t entirely sure whether they were referring to historical museums or to working girls, but I was soon to find that on the other side of the street to my hostel was ‘Questa Casa’, claiming inevitably to be Australia’s oldest brothel, but which offered tourist visits by day and more traditional services by night.

Questa Casa, oldest brothel in Australia
Questa Casa, oldest brothel in Australia

On our final night, a few of us went out for a meal at a Thai BYO (bring your own alcohol) restaurant one night, and it fell upon me to go out and find some wine. The first place that I tried was the Exchange Hotel, one of the three main central pubs. There were the usual dress code signs on the door, including an embargo on steel toe caps after 9pm. Since I was wearing mine, I wasn’t sure if they would let me in, but as it turned out the bouncer was leaning on the juke box having a chat with some mates rather than paying full attention to the door, so I presume that they don’t get a lot of trouble. That was a pleasant start; I have a deep and abiding hatred for officious door staff. I ambled around a bit, peering between the guys at the bar to see if I could spot any bottles of wine amongst the racks of beer and coke, and suddenly realised that there were a couple of semi-naked girls bouncing up and down trying to get my attention. The barmaids were all wearing lingerie and little else, and a pleasant bubbly blonde laughed when I asked after wine and sent me to the Irish pub next door. I guess it isn’t a wine sort of place. Paddy’s had a selection of two red wines, so I picked one and ambled back to the restaurant. Some of the guys had been to Kalgoorlie before and they laughed when I mentioned the barmaids; apparently they’re called “skimpies” and work every night at the Exchange. It seems that they used to be quite ribald but there was a crackdown recently and now they’re much tamer. The Thai meal was nicely presented and very tasty, although of course (being Australia) very mild. At the end, the chef came out to see if we’d enjoyed it, and seemed on the point of apologising for using too much chilli before she took in our effusive thanks. Having eaten and drunk everything in sight, we decided to go on to the Exchange where they were happy to serve us unlimited pints of lager and stout, but no spirits, not even over ice. I asked one of the lasses about it and she said that this was a specific rule at the Exchange; you could only drink spirits with mixers.

The Exchange Hotel
The Exchange Hotel

The pub had a pleasant blokey atmosphere. Most of the patrons were wearing fluoro shirts and boots from a day at the mines, and some were drunk enough to be dancing on the pool table and using the chalk to write on the ceiling. The skimpies came out often to chat to the drinkers and panhandle for tips (“If we get enough tips we might take some more clothes off”), and it was all very friendly and nobody hassled them. There were only two female customers, two young girls who seemed to be regulars and went everywhere together, although nobody seemed to pay them much attention, even though they weren’t wearing very much either. The two of us who were still standing at two in the morning did try to make it to one of the other pubs, but it seems (thankfully… we had an exam next day) that everything closes at the same time, and we staggered back to our hotels. As I sat on the plane home, trying to ignore the pain in my head and looking forward to a week of exams in Gladstone, I reflected that Kalgoorlie would not be a bad place to live at all.

Pancake Creek

The anchor made a few dragging noises in the night, but when I ran up on deck it clearly hadn’t moved at all, so we put it down to the chain clattering over some underground rock shelf as we swung.

In the morning we got a clearer view of our anchorage. The starboard beacon about twenty metres away marked a very active shoal ground, whose frothing waves we had seen glistening in the moonlight when we arrived.


HERE BE DRAGONS

The white iso beacon on the other side of us marked a rocky outcrop projecting into the channel. There was room to get past this rock at high tide and into the inner bay and beach where we could see a number of other boats at anchor, but we were happy with our privacy and with our ability to leave quickly without worrying about either daylight or tide, so we stayed where we were.

Pancake Creek turned out to be our favourite anchorage so far, and we stayed for a couple of days. One afternoon we pumped up our inflatable kayak and went exploring.

There were many miles of secluded little beaches, some showing signs of repeated return visits in the form of home-made swings, tables, firepits and the occasional beach chair. We paddled past a few of them and then dragged the kayak up over the water line while we went ashore, where we soon found an old boardwalk. The boards themselves were almost completely rotted, but the path was still a reasonably clear and ran in a dead straight line up through the woods of the peninsula.

OUR GUMOTEX KAYAK A WALK IN THE WOODS


THE BEACH ROCKS

Although there weren’t many visible flowers, the forest was delicately perfumed and alive with butterflies and birds. We passed banksia trees heavily laden with pods, and grasses bearing tall rushes several metres high.


REINHARD’S TICKLE STICK

The track eventually led out onto the dunes and finally up to Burnett Head itself, where we found a lovingly restored lighthouse with pristine white out-buildings. We met the caretaker, who was part of the voluntary group that maintain it and who was doing his one-month live-in stint for the year. He claimed that the fully automated light, which we had seen at a distance of 20 miles, is powered by only a 100 watt bulb. He also told us that our boardwalk was the original mule track that was used to ferry supplies up from Pancake Creek, but that now they came by “Larc”, which is an amphibious tourist bus that regularly visits the seaward side of Bustard Head.

We strolled out a little way along the Larc track which gave us a tremendous view across Pancake Creek’s (non-navigable) rear entrance and inner waterways. It looks like a tempting cruising ground for a shallow-draft dinghy or perhaps even a trailer-sailer, and we’d love to come back and spend some more time there.


VIEW SOUTHWARD FROM BUSTARD HEAD

Back in Pancake Creek we stopped for a refreshing sunset bathe on the beach before paddling back to the boat where we played cribbage and drank wine while our yorkshire pudding baked in the oven.

It’s a great spot, but since it’s out of range of both telephone and internet, we couldn’t stay for too long because it was time for both of us to do our exams. I needed to fly to Kalgoorlie for a field course, and Bronwyn needed to find a university that would provide her with an invigilator; nearby Gladstone seemed ideal because it had a marina, an airport, and a university. We set sail and had a very pleasant trip, arriving in the late afternoon.

The port was curiously quiet. We sailed along the wide commercial shipping channel, surrounded by enormous gravel loaders and industrial plant, all of which were shut down and silent. Just when I was beginning to entertain fanciful theories about a worldwide plague virus that had struck everybody down while we were away, a bulk carrier emerged from behind a headland and thundered gently by.


SIGNS OF LIFE

Bustard Head and Pancake Creek

Motoring out of Port Bundaberg, we gave way to a couple of fishing trawlers coming in after a night’s work. They were accompanied by the usual flocks of seagulls eager to catch the guts and scraps thrown overboard as the fishermen cleaned their catch, but in addition they were accompanied by at least half a dozen sea eagles also vying for the same thing.


GOT ANY FISH?

We must have missed a good party, too, because somebody had driven their ute into the river.


DRIVEN TO DRINK

Once out into the open sea and running at a useful six knots, I fired up the engine and idled it to play with the water maker, which was now running through a shiny new circuit breaker. It worked beautifully, generating ten litres of water in three hours. Not exactly enough for a bath, but sufficient to maintain our independence from marina water. My next task is to see if I can power it using the tow generator rather than the engine, but the tow generator is out of service at the moment because I have cannibalised some of it’s parts to fix something else.

Although the weather was beautiful, we could see the occasional squall moving past in the distance. We’ve noticed that they do usually march past either out to sea or inland of us, leaving the strip just offshore generally free from rain. Later that afternoon, though, an almost invisible squall came out of a double rainbow in a cloudless sky and hit us broadside. The rain was so perfectly horizontal that one side of the cockpit stayed completely dry while the other ran with storm water, soaking us instantly. After a minute or so the squall moved on, leaving behind it a much improved wind direction that enabled us to put the swell behind us as night fell and we headed for the reefs of Bustard Head’s innovatively named Inner, Middle and Outer rocks.

It was now quite dark and we were navigating by GPS again, aided by the two lighthouses on the shore. Just as we arrived at the gap between Outer and Middle Rocks, another squall came through to the south of us and eclipsed the lights; quite a feat in the case of Bustard Head which is rated at 19 mile visibility and we were only a couple of miles away. A big swell picked us up and we surfed through in complete darkness, very exhilarating.

We were heading for Pancake Creek, a sheltered patch of water under the double peninsular of Bustard Head and Clews Point. We had a number of charts which disagreed on the navigation markers that we might find. Popping up and down between cockpit and chart table, I quickly realised that the reality was different from any of them. I was getting very nervous; the admiralty charts showed us approaching shoals and rocks, in the dark and carried along by the tide. Bronwyn, however, was at the helm and had been watching the instruments. She was confident that the depths were looking OK, so we ran the gap and stopped only a few boat lengths away from a port marker on a rock, a starboard marker on a roaring shoal, and a dimly seen iso marker on a rock ridge. The anchor bounced a few times on rock and then caught solidly in the fast-flowing current. A few minutes were enough to convince us that we weren’t drifting anywhere, so we put out a little more chain to counter the rising tide – but not too much to allow us to swing and hit any of the three navigation lights – and went to sleep.

Bundaberg

We were anchored in what was technically Bundaberg Port rather than in the town itself, which is a few miles upstream. It is theoretically possible to take a keel boat all the way up to Bundaberg itself, but there was a shallow section that would only be passable on a good tide and we were happy where we were, so we unlimbered the tender and prepared ourselves for a little expedition.

This whole outboard motor thing is still new to us, so we didn’t know how long it would take us to motor the six miles into town and back, with or against the tides and with or against the prevailing winds. We packed a variety of clothes and some spare fuel, and set off.

The river is very wide and, as we found when I flamboyantly decided to cut a corner, quite shallow enough in places to beach an eight-foot dinghy. One bank seems to be mainly mangroves, while the other is taken up with a sugar cane plantation. A little way along, we chugged past what is presumably the cane farmer’s house, very nice indeed with a large ketch moored at the bottom of the garden.

This was the only boat that we saw on the river, and we were once again surprised at how quiet it is here. We have come to expect that waterways are always packed with fishermen in tinnies and people in runabouts, but there had been nothing moving at the port and there was nobody around here. Only when we reached the outskirts of the town did we see one or two men with rods standing on the shore.

Mind you, we were grateful for the peace. The headwind was opposing the incoming tide and we had to contend with some pretty large waves without the additional excitement from the wakes of full-bore fishing tinnies.

It’s almost six miles from the Cane Ferry to Bundaberg, and we discovered that the Walker Bay with its 3hp outboard will run for five miles before it runs out of fuel. The whole journey took about an hour an a half. So now we know.

Bundaberg itself was small and compact, and contained the kinds of stores that suggested that people come in from the country to get supplies. The most interesting architecture was (as usual) to be seen in the pubs, which stood on every corner.


THE OLD BUNDY TAVERN. PERHAPS WE SHOULD HAVE DRUNK HERE INSTEAD?

Since we were standing at the centre of the mighty Bundaberg rum empire, I expected to see a great many rum-related motifs and interesting rum products for sale, but this wasn’t the case at all. Even the pubs didn’t carry anything more elaborate than the usual Bundy-and-coke in a can.

We had intended to visit the distillery, but by the time we got there it had closed for the day. We had heard, though, that the tasting room does not present the usual display of grand old vintages that you might expect, but instead focusses on all the different mixers that you can put into your Bundy to make it taste better. This seems reasonable to me, because – grand old Australian institution as it may be – it does taste pretty nasty on its own.

We had with us a fairly esoteric shopping list, but the town managed to come up trumps with the whole thing; Croc boat shoes, a circuit breaker, a European pillow case, an adjustable wrench, a computer fan and a cribbage board. We even found somebody to make us a three metre steel leash for the tender.

Spotting an Indian restaurant, we decided to splash out on a celebratory meal. It wasn’t open yet, so we waited over indifferent beer outside an indifferent pub, counting the teenage mothers as they strutted past in the gathering dusk.

The restaurant itself occupied a fine old corner building, possibly an old bank or post office, and had been rather lovingly restored with hardwood dado rails and original brass electrical fittings overlain by the usual Indian restaurant colour scheme but executed with rather more taste than usual. We asked for the wine list but they turned out to be BYO, so Bronwyn popped out to find some wine while I ordered a vindaloo and a jalfrezi.


INSIDE ‘SPICES PLUS’ RESTAURANT

Some time later, Bronwyn had still not returned. I drank my third glass of water and grinned helplessly at the waitress who was hovering uncertainly in the wings. Another two couples arrived and ordered, and then finally the door opened and Bronwyn arrived triumphantly brandishing a bottle of white. There were, it seems, only two places in town where you could buy wine. The RSL wouldn’t serve her unless she was a member, and she couldn’t become a member without a driving licence, although they were happy for her to drink at the bar. The off-sales counter at the neighbouring pub was happy to sell her a bottle until they discovered that they had run out of brown paper bags. Apparently this was a big deal, because they refused to sell her wine without a bag. Eventually they came to an agreement where she paid the more expensive pub price, and then they “forgot” to open it and Bronwyn smuggled it out under her jacket. I’m sure that there is some logic in that somewhere.

Finally we were all set to enjoy our meal. I had deliberately ordered both dishes “hot” because the Australian taste is for very bland food and we fancied a bit of spice. In the event, I suspect that the chef merely wafted a couple of chillies over the pan before putting them away for the next mad Englishman, because even the vindaloo was exceptionally mild. Still, the dishes were well made and the staff friendly, and we had a lovely evening. It made a nice change for somebody else to do the cooking and the washing up.

It was full dark by the time we left the restaurant and made our way down to the river to our tender, but the river was smooth and calm and the clouds drew back to reveal a crescent moon. We motored back along past the fields of sugar cane, with the moonlight glinting off the water and the Milky Way shining above. It was absolutely glorious.

Across Hervey Bay to Bundaberg

We left on the dawn tide, more or less, pausing only for a leisurely breakfast and a few household chores. The top end of the Great Sandy Strait isn’t particularly shallow, so we weren’t in fact concerned about the state of the tide, and simply followed the navigation markers to the north west. Even so, the proliferation of sandbanks and channels was a little confusing, and we were glad to find an old large-scale map in our collection which showed a lot more detail than our supposedly up to date GPS chart, which was missing most of the cardinals and channel markers.

By lunchtime we were out of the Strait and into Hervey Bay itself, sailing before the wind at a respectable 5 knots. I started up the engine and let it idle so that I could experiment some more with the water maker, reasoning that (a) it probably needed the electrical boost from the alternator, and (b) it probably needed the hydrostatic boost of the engine’s water pump. In the event, I think that both assumptions were correct, because after about five minutes we got our first few spoonfuls of fresh water. Hurrah!
A couple of seconds later, the fuse blew. Ah well, back to the drawing board.

There wasn’t too much swell, but we’ve obviously been at anchor for too long, because we both started to feel a bit nauseous. We kept up a steady stream of snacks and hot drinks, which seems to be the only reliable way of keeping it under control.

We weren’t helped by the fact that there was absolutely nothing to look at. Even though Hervey Bay is more or less enclosed, the surrounding land is so flat that we had a virtually undisturbed 360 degree horizon. As far as the eye could see, we were the only thing moving. It was Sunday lunchtime, typically a busy time out on the water, but today there were no boats of any kind, not even a solitary fisherman in his tinnie. No planes passed overhead. Neither were there any birds, turtles, fish, dolphins, or dugongs. It was almost boring.

Thankfully the wind got a bit more exciting in the afternoon, and soon we were flying along at over seven knots with a large following swell. Wheeeee!

As night fell we came into sight of the commercial shipping lane into Bundaberg, lines of green and red flashing lights marching arrow-straight across the sea. It seemed to take a very long time to get into the channel itself, and through that whole time we didn’t see a single other vessel. Once into the lane we dropped the sails, and discovered that although the lane was very long it was pretty narrow. It was also disconcerting that all the lights had been programmed to switch on and off simultaneously, which meant that for three seconds in every four it was pitch black and we couldn’t see a thing. Then we got a single second of bright colours all the way to the horizon, and by the time we’d worked out what we were looking at it had all gone dark again.

With the help of some large-scale charts of the Burnett River entrance and the GPS we worked it out and made our way upriver past a few marinas, past the molasses plant (yum, great smell) and dropped our anchor in a few metres of water just before the cane sugar cable ferry. We’d come in at low water and were close to the edge of the river, so we had to be certain that we’d paid out enough chain to cope with the 2.5 metre tide without giving us too much swinging room for the size of the channel. We had dinner and a welcome glass of wine and did some route planning with – oh go on then – just another glass of wine and it all seemed to be working splendidly, so we went gratefully to bed for a calm and undisturbed nights rest.

North White Cliffs, Fraser Island

We left on the dawn tide.

Of course that’s complete rubbish. What we actually did was have a leisurely breakfast before motoring gently out of the creek some time during the mid morning. But we did make very sure that the tide was still rising, because the Great Sandy Strait is far too shallow for us to navigate otherwise.

Large sea turtles poked their heads out to watch us go. They were very nervous, only popping their noses up long enough for a quick snort of air; by the time you’d turned your head to see them, they had gone, leaving only a spreading circular ripple. Some of the heads didn’t look quite the same, and we realised after a while that some of them were dugongs rather than turtles.

There wasn’t any wind, but we were happy to motor along in the sunshine, navigating from channel marker to channel marker. There were plenty of markers, but there were also plenty of sand banks and channels, and often it wasn’t exactly clear whether the marker that you could see was in your channel or in an adjacent one. I wouldn’t have liked to do it in the dark, or even on a cloudy day.

We only had a few hours to get through the really shallow portion of the Strait, but the 2.4 metre high tide carried us through with little cause for alarm. We did pass over a few places where we had less than a metre under the keel, confirming that we would never have gotten through at low tide.

When we reached the North White Cliffs which mark the end of the shallow portion of the passage, we plonked down our anchor for a few days of relaxation.


CLIFFS, WHITE, NORTHERLY.

The beach is only a few tens of metres away, consisting of sand eroded from the overhanging cliffs overlying some exposed coal measures.


BARBECUE, ANYONE?

From here it is but a gentle stroll to the Mackenzie Jetty where steam trains used to haul milled timber out to waiting barges. The mill and the associated houses have all gone, but most of the jetty still stands and there’s some abandoned hardware on the beach, including an old locomotive boiler.


REINHARD PLAYS TRAINS


REINHARD PLAYS TRACTORS

A little inland is the site of the wartime headquarters of Australia’s secret Z Squadron, from where they launched training limpet-mine missions against presumably good-humoured local boats and businesses, and real and very dangerous missions into Asia and the Pacific. Most of the base has rusted away, but the history and photographs were interesting. I was bemused to see that the old tyres from their abandoned vehicles are still practically useable after over fifty years of lying in the bush. No wonder tyres aren’t welcome in landfill sites.

We’re also on the edge of Kingfisher Bay where there is a small resort. We had formed high hopes of sundowner cocktails at the beach bar, but it turned out to be just a standard schnitzel-and-cheap-lager joint, so we gave it a miss. The resort itself seemed pleasant enough, but had an aura of neurosis about it, being completely surrounded by a tall dingo fence behung with pictures of slavering hounds and dire warnings about letting children play unattended. We were exhorted to “attack vigorously” if approached by angry dogs. Instead, we had a champagne picnic.


CHEERS!

Garrys Anchorage

We found ourselves at the mouth of Tin Can Bay at the southern end of the Great Sandy Strait. The Strait is an area of low-lying islands and shoaling sand banks that separates the four hundred square miles of Fraser Island from the mainland. The official chart doesn’t show very much detail, but the depths shown suggest that it is practically un-navigable. In reality the Great Sandy Strait is a very popular cruising ground provided you remain vigilant about the state of the tides. Our plan was to overnight in Tin Can Bay and then ride the flood tide up to Garrys Anchorage, sleep there and then ride the next tide up to North White Cliffs.


THE SOUTHERN PART OF THE GREAT SANDY STRAIT

We did start to head for Tin Can Bay, but then realised that we were so pumped with adrenalin from crossing the Mad Mile that we might as well make use of the rest of the tide and get to Garrys Anchorage a day early.

The southern part of the Strait was wide, deep and placid. Because of the high tide, we weren’t able to see the sand banks which lurked in the shallows, but they were well marked with navigation beacons.

The rest of the morning was an absolute delight. The sun shone down, birds soared overhead, and we chugged in perfect solitude between endless mangrove-fringed sandy islands.


ENJOYING THE CALM

Garrys Anchorage proved easy enough to find, a calm and shallow strip of water between Fraser Island itself and the small Stewart Island. It was by now late morning. We consulted the tide tables, anchored in five metres of water, and went straight to bed.

We awoke in the afternoon. I went for a quick swim to have a look at the bottom of the boat, which was in good condition and completely free of marine growth. We lazed about and enjoyed the utter peace.

When we’d anchored at high water, we were sitting in a large and placid lake. As the tide fell, muddy banks rose eerily from the water with a damp crackling sound. It was slightly alarming to find ourselves dropping steadily into a muddy canyon, but our calculations were sound and we remained safely in the narrow channel.


WHERE DID ALL THAT LAND COME FROM?

It was blissfully quiet after the continual traffic of the Mooloolaba canal. We could see one other yacht in the distance, joined later in the evening by a second one, but the only sound was the piping of the oyster catchers, the slurping of the sand bars, and the gentle crackling of crustaceans underneath the hull.


TINY VISITORS

Mad Mile at Wide Bay Bar

Once clear of the Mooloolaba bar there was only a metre or two of swell, which was far less than we’d expected after a week of storms. Even more conveniently, the swell was coming from the same direction as the wind, so although the breeze was light we still managed to get up to a reasonable cruising speed.

I’d re-plumbed the water maker in Mooloolaba, so as soon as we got into open water I popped down below to play with it. It was much improved, but still didn’t seem to be building up enough of a hydrostatic head to get a good flow. I messed about with it for a while, but then the combination of close work and a quartering swell got me feeling somewhat green, and I went back up on deck for a lie down.

By the time I’d recovered, Bronwyn was also feeling the effects of the swell – obviously our sea legs had regressed during our long stay – so she went below to rest and I took the helm.

Very soon I was very hungry. Having eaten all the snack food in the cockpit, I went hunting below. I had to rush up and down in fits and bursts, as I was hand-steering because the wind was too variable to trust that Harriet would steer a close compass course, but eventually I found a large helping of ravioli that Bronwyn had prepared before we left, bless her, although she was herself still ill and dead to the world.

It was a moonless and cloudy night, very dark indeed, and “keeping a lookout” really meant glancing around in the pitch black every now and again to see if there were any lights out there. The rest of the time was spent either staring at the compass and trying to hold a reasonable course, or marvelling at the bright luminosity of our phosphorescent bow wave.

At one point I became rather confused by a fast-moving fishing boat that was displaying no navigation lights at all. I had to get close enough to see its deck lights reflecting in its wake before I could figure out which way it was heading, and take evasive action. I’m not sure that he ever saw me.

On a separate occasion, I noticed what I took to be the masthead lights of a stationary trawler, so I gently eased over to one side to give him a wide berth. I was quite shocked when the apparently distant vessel suddenly turned into a man in oilskins standing on a metal raft only a few boat-lengths away, holding a lantern and peering into the water. It’s funny what you see, out there on the ocean.

Eventually the wind died and I started the motor. This meant that steering became much more of a chore, because I couldn’t just balance the sails and let her run, I had to fight her every moment because the prop really wanted to turn to put the quartering swell behind us. At around midnight I realised that I was very, very tired, and although I felt guilty about it I dragged Bronwyn up for a stint while I napped on the floor of the saloon.

A couple of hours later, I was back in the saddle. Bronwyn wasn’t looking good at all, a combination of sea-sickness and the tail end of a nasty cold, and she was very glad to crawl back into bed. Luckily I was feeling quite chipper after my break, and especially so when the stars came out and the wind returned, and I found myself gliding silently beneath the Milky Way. A few hours later, Venus rose brighter than I have ever seen. It actually cast shadows on the boat and laid a Venus-beam across the water. Gorgeous.

As dawn broke we were coming abeam of Double Island Point, a common roadstead anchorage. We’d had half an idea to rest there for a few hours before risking the nearby Wide Bay Bar which was bound to be hairy after all the recent weather, but I spoke to the Tin Can Bay Coastguard on the radio and he said that it was “a bit rolly, but not too bad” before giving me the latest waypoints around the shifting shoals. Bronwyn appeared on deck feeling much improved, and was able to spell me for an hour or so across Wide Bay while I took a nap, so we decided that since we were on a perfect rising tide we might as well go for it.

Wide Bay is (don’t you love Australian cartographers?) about ten miles across, and much of the north western corner is continually breaking shoals. There are leading lights on the shore, but the bay is so big that you can’t really see them until it’s too late, so the coastguard maintains a set of coordinates that you can follow to keep you out of trouble. We dropped the sails and got to the first waypoint easily enough, but just had to trust the course to the next one, because it looked from our vantage point as if we were motoring into a wall of breaking waves. I think that the cat behind us didn’t have the coordinates, because it chickened out of the leading line three times before committing to following our trail. I don’t really blame them as it did look very intimidating ahead.

Just before the second waypoint, a gap magically appeared in the wall of white water and we chugged through. It reminded me of the time I paddled out of a lagoon break in Samoa, with huge walls of water towering on either side and my kayak slipping unharmed in between.

Bronwyn called up the course to the third waypoint from her position below at the chart table. I turned to the west and we entered the zone known locally as “The Mad Mile”.

It was completely crazy. I could just make out some leading lights in the distance, but without the waypoint course I wouldn’t have believed it possible. Enormous rolling surf surged across our path, breaking into curving rollers to the left and to the right. Huge mountains of water lifted up and dropped away, sending thundering walls of water across our route. Despite my best efforts, Pindimara began to roll violently. The gunwhales were almost in the water, and we shipped some green ones across the deck. Down through the hatchway, I could see Bronwyn’s knuckles tightening on the companionway banister as she tried to keep herself in her seat. The computer is held down by a velcro strap, but the GPS and cabling is not, and I could hear vague crashings and tinklings from below over the roar of the waves. Bronwyn says that she saw all of our coffee mugs leap off the shelf and then magically set back down into their positions. On deck, the binoculars leapt from their usually safe shelf under the dodger, spiralled through the air and landed unharmed on the other side.

I spied another yacht coming towards us, obviously using the same waypoints to get out to sea. He was about our size, and on several occasions I saw clear air under at least half of his hull; presumably we looked exactly the same to him. I would have loved to fire up the video camera, but I was fully occupied with staying at the helm and keeping the bow out of the water. It was all I could do to give him a cheerfully nonchalant wave as he flashed past in a welter of foam.

And then… the sun shone on the placid waters of Wide Bay Harbour, and the quiet sandy shores of Fraser Island stretched out to the north. A low-sided landing craft chugged across in front of us, laden with tourists. I looked over my shoulder. Behind us, the seas still raged, but it all looked out of focus and unreal. We had arrived.

Escape from Mooloolaba

On our ninth day trapped in Mooloolaba, we became convinced that the morrow would finally bring an end to the inclement weather. We really, really wanted to get out as soon as possible, but we had to ensure that we reached our destination, the Wide Bay Bar, in the daylight and on the rising tide, while simultaneously managing to cross the Mooloolaba bar in a reasonable depth of water. The numbers worked out to a dusk departure on the following day.

We’d already discovered that there weren’t any quality drinking establishments around (the Sunshine Coast Brewery is good, but sadly out of town), so we decided to celebrate in the Wharf Tavern, which we had judged to be the roughest of the local hostelries. Our radar seemed to be on the nose, for after requesting change for the pool table, we discovered that not only was the table broken, but the barmaid had given us some New Zealand dollar coins which wouldn’t have fitted anyway.

After a few beers in a fishing town, Bronwyn always likes to mix with the trawlermen. For instance, long term readers of these annals will remember Wattie the tuna man in Lakes Entrance, who became a memorable part of our honeymoon when we discovered that the reason that the bar staff were so nervous about him drinking with us was that he had just been released from prison for stabbing the previous landlord. Here in Mooloolaba, Bronwyn was soon deep in conversation with Dave the prawn fisher, who popped off half way through to shoot up some speed, and then began calling up his mates to “sort out” a harmless young student who he had suddenly decided was a gay predator. All very charming. On the other hand, I got chatting to a lovely lass who was celebrating her engagement while simultaneously plotting a career that would get her out of town. More power to your elbow, Emma! Hope to see you again soon, further up the road.

We had all day to recover from our cheap beer hangovers, and lots of time to ferry back and forth with fuel and supplies while preparing the boat for sea. After so long at anchor, it takes quite a while to get everything cleaned up and squirrelled away, but we got it all done and as the sun sank below the horizon we chugged gently past the trawlers and out into the main channel. On the way out, we narrowly missed a bunch of unlit outrigger canoes which were invisible in the darkness, but then we were out in the ocean and free. Goodbye, Mooloolaba.

The Natives are Restless

We’ve been hiding from the storms that are currently destroying property all down the southern Queensland coast. Gale force winds, monstrous seas, and biblical rainfall have already claimed at least one life, and that was on land. Even if we were crazy enough to go out to sea, there’s nowhere to go because the bars up and down the coast are all effectively closed to traffic.

There are a several cruising yachts packed into this little basin. Every day or so, one crew or another climbs up to the Caloundra lighthouse to see what the conditions are like out to sea, and then return shaking their heads.


SURF’S UP

One evening we noticed a harbour fisheries vessel going from yacht to yacht. Each visit seemed to involve a lot of discussion, and we assumed that they wanted to discuss fishing quotas or check our documentation, so we were a bit surprised when they arrived at our stern and began threatening us with fines and legal action for outstaying our welcome in Mooloolaba. In actual fact we were still within the ten days which local rules allow when hiding from inclement weather, but this didn’t slow them down at all. With vague threats of heavy penalties, they advised us to abandon our yacht and move into a hotel.

They spent a particularly long time on one of the larger yachts which has apparently been here for quite a bit longer than us. There seemed to be lot of paperwork being passed back and forth, and next morning when I was just thinking about puttering over to ask the skipper what it had all been about, we noticed that he must have left on the dawn tide. We can’t imagine where he went, and hope that he found some safe harbour before the next 55-knot gale hit.

Days passed. Endless rain hammered on the deck. Wind howled in the rigging. Flood waters surged by, battering the hull from side to side. The mud-laden river was packed with wreckage from upstream, and sometimes one of the larger pieces of debris would bump up against our hull and scrape past on its way down to the sea.

On another evening we were down below, catching up on some paperwork, when we heard a soft thump from outside. We weren’t overly concerned, as it didn’t sound particularly alarming and was probably just something bouncing off the deck in the storm. A little later there was another one: thump.

The rain slackened off for a moment, and I got up to open the bathroom window because we had been getting the occasional whiff of an unpleasant smell and I thought perhaps that we should let some ventilation into the head. While I was up, I stuck my head out of the hatch to look at the weather and was greeted by a loud thump-thump on the deck and a strong smell of stale fish.

I turned on the torch and started laughing. There were two gannets roosting in the top set of mast spreaders. Every time they let fly with some droppings, the wind whipped them back at a sixty degree angle to impact just aft of the dodger. They can’t have been there for more than a few hours, but the sheer volume of guano was astounding. The floor of the cockpit, both lockers, and both solar panels were liberally coated in up to a centimetre of foul-smelling paste.


GANNET GUANO

I waved my torch at the birds and they sulkily left to find another boat, but not before one of them scored a direct and very wet hit on the padlock for the locker containing the cleaning equipment.

We got the hint. It really was time to leave.

After the Deluge

All this week, south-eastern Queensland has been getting a pasting from the weather gods. We’re still anchored in Mooloolaba, waiting for the deluge to stop, for the wind to ease, and for the 5 metre swells to die down. The rain’s been astonishing. Sometimes I put my hand out of the companionway hatch and it feels like I’ve stuck it under a bath tap. We hear stories of power lines down and major roads out of commission, with 150 mm or more of rain falling in just 12 hours.

The winds have been exciting, too. They were forecasting 45 and 55 knots (+/- 40%) out to sea. I haven’t been monitoring our local wind speed (the indicator is on deck, in the rain) but during the nights the anchor chain has been groaning under the strain and at times Pindimara was bucking like a bronco. All around us, yachts have been dragging their anchors, which is not too great when you consider that we’re packed like sardines into a canal lined with millionaire mansions. One guy on a 42 metre yacht woke up to find himself 50 metres downstream and practically inside somebody’s lounge room. He wasn’t the only one, and we’ve seen a few people motoring nervously about trying to find some extra swinging room. Our anchor has set just fine, and it hasn’t moved at all… although with all the pressure on it I imagine it’s pretty well dug in by now, and I’m not looking forward to trying to hoist it when we leave.

The canal water is thick and brown and full of flotsam from upstream. In a brief moment of calm I climbed the mast to fit a new anchor light, and from my vantage point I could see that the whole surface of the canal is slick with oil washed down the storm drains from the roads. There’s a whole lot of water out there; the canal is running so fast that the tide didn’t get a chance to come in, and Pindimara remained pointed upstream all day.

One day we went ashore to do the laundry. When we returned to the dinghy it was full of rain water, and I actually wore out my bailer trying to get rid of it. At one point, with the bailer splintered down to half its original size and a new cloudburst sweeping in from the sea, I found that I couldn’t empty the boat faster than the rain was filling it. Thank goodness that all our nice clean laundry was sealed into dry-bags.

The yacht’s usually pretty waterproof, but on one occasion we must have left one of the three locks on the head window ever so slightly loose. Usually this might have resulted in a few dribbles on the floor of the shower, but a couple of hours of this current downpour filled the bathroom with several inches of water, and when we got back the water was lapping at the lip of the bulkhead into the lounge. That would have been messy.

One good thing is that when the dinghy fills up overnight, we can pump the nice fresh rain water straight into our tanks, although this morning I did wonder if it would sink before I could get started.


NO WATER SHORTAGE TODAY

Apart from the gale warnings, the weather forecasts are quite vague, peppered with “depending on movement” and “maybe lower”. I downloaded some GRIB files and quite frankly I don’t blame the forecasters. It’s anybody’s guess what’ll happen next.

Just for fun, here’s a graphic representation of the wind strength data earlier today. Red arrows indicate Force 8 to 9. See that confused bit where all the different coloured arrows are stacked up on top of each other? That’s where we are.


WIND SPEED GRIB DATA FOR MAY 20 2009

Since we had so much fresh water, and since the canal is not really suitable for swimming, we decided to have a bath. We have a kid’s inflatable paddling pool that exactly fits inside the cockpit. Add a dinghy-full of rain water and a few pans hot from the stove, and Robert is your mother’s brother.


BATH TIME ON PINDIMARA

Mooloolaba

Mooloolaba is a very curious place. From the road it looks just like a standard eastern seaboard town, with malls and surf shops and miles of perfect beach. Arriving by yacht gives you a different perspective, because the best place to drop an anchor is in the sea canal at the end of the harbour, which is an extensive network of artificial sandy channels lined with millionaires’ mansions, each with one or two yachts parked at the bottom of the garden. It’s like a cross between Venice and Florida.


MOOLOOLABA CANALS FROM THE TOP OF OUR MAST

We have stopped here for a while to do a little maintenance. Nothing major, but the masthead anchor light needs replacing, the water maker has a suction problem, and we are still badly in need of a replacement joker valve for the toilet. This latter has been annoying to us for quite some time, because we’d previously bought a cheap unbranded valve from Whitworths (ten dollars instead of near eighty for a full Jabsco service kit that contains lots of other parts that we don’t need) and have regretted it ever since, because the inferior quality of the valve meant that old sewage slowly gets backwashed into the toilet bowl until it fills up. You can imagine what then happens when the toilet bowl gets sloshed around in a seaway.

There are quite a few chandleries in the Mooloolaba area, and we’ve managed to source all of these bits and pieces (including a genuine $35 Jabsco joker valve! Hurrah!) as well as some new toys, such as running lights for the tender. I even managed to source a couple of oil filters for the engine, which have been mysteriously like gold dust all the way up this coast.


REPLACING THE MASTHEAD LIGHT

The shops and services are widely spread around the canal system, and I’ve been really grateful to have the new outboard motor because it would otherwise have taken me half a day to row from one end to the other and back. It also gives us a chance to gawp at all the mansions and yachts as we trundle back and forth.

After a few days of working on the boat and on schoolwork, we got a little stir-crazy and looked around for something a bit different. As luck would have it, we happened on an advert for the Sunshine Coast Brewery, which is tucked away on an out-of-town industrial estate. A local bus driver took pity on us, and made a little diversion and dropped us off at the entrance to the park, which was a lovely thing to do and typical of the people who we meet every day here on the Queensland coast.

The brewery produces a great selection of European-style beers (we were particularly stunned by the Rye ESB and the Hefeweissen), plus some interesting variations on alcoholic ginger beer. We got chatting to Greg, the owner, and had a grand afternoon tasting all his excellent ales, after which he joined us in one for the road and took us back to town. A top man with a top brewery.


BRONWYN CORNERS FIVE BEERS AT ONCE

After we’d manhandled our case of beers out to the yacht, Bronwyn decided that she was still thirsty, so we took the dinghy back to shore and made our way to one of the local pubs where the beers were far inferior but we had an entertaining time drinking with some locals and watching people falling over and being bounced by the door staff.

The next morning I was feeling just a touch under the weather, so we made our way to the beach and took it easy.


THE MASTER BUILDER AT WORK

Mooloolaba beach was very pleasant, and the water was calm and shallow and we were very glad to finally do some swimming. We’ve been conserving fresh water on the boat and haven’t fancied a dip in the murky canal water, so we’ve been feeling pretty dirty and it was good to get clean.

Escape from Moreton Bay

We’d been in two minds about going into Mooloolaba, which was the next stop before Fraser Island. We were keen to see it, but the official charts said that it was too shallow for us to reach the area marked off for anchorage, and we preferred not to pay for a marina berth. Our cruising guide stated that depths were good, but the accompanying printed chart told a different story. We knew that Pelagic had been there before so we checked with them. Not only did they say that it was plenty deep enough, but in fact they were anchored there right now, having made a fast 33-hour trip up from Iluka while we were in Brisbane.

The forecast for the next day was for very little wind, and since we wanted to arrive in Mooloolaba before sunset we worked out our passage plan for an average speed of 4 knots. This entailed a dawn start, but in the event we lazily emerged blinking into the sunlight after a long, comfortable sleep and finally hoisted the anchor at around half past eight.

Stretching before us were the hundred square miles of shoals and sand banks that had caused us so much stress on the way in. The dangers were, of course, completely invisible, lurking just below the surface of the innocently sparkling blue sea. In the pleasant sunshine, they seemed to taunt us.

Armed once more with our slightly unreliable chart, we took up the challenge. Rather than mix it with the large ships that were streaming out of the Brisbane docks and up the dredged channel, we chose to take an older, unmarked portion of the Main Channel for as long as possible, before joining them on the marked shipping route out to sea. Although requiring some more blind navigation, this had the advantage of giving us a fast beam reach in what turned out to be a rather decent southerly. Before long we were creaming along at 8 knots between the lurking sand banks and briefly considered reefing the main, but “damn the torpedoes!” we put up with a bit of weather helm because we’d probably need every inch of sail when we turned into the northerly-running shipping channel.

During the morning, we saw a number of large tankers and freighters rumbling by ahead of us, but when we actually made the final turn there was only one left in sight, and that one far ahead of us in the haze. Despite our concerns, we had the channel to ourselves for the rest of the morning.

By early afternoon, we were almost out of the clutches of Moreton Bay. Rather than follow the final couple of doglegs in the marked channel, we cut the last corner across some 6 metre deep sand banks, which made life very interesting for a while because the shallow water amplified the swell on the beam and gave us an entertaining but very rocky ride. I believe that it was at this point that the coffee thermos emptied itself over Bronwyn’s school books.

The wind was forecast to drop in the afternoon, but if anything it got a little stronger, and when we finally made it into the open sea and pointed our nose at Mooloolaba, we were running at 7-8 knots before 20-30 knots of breeze. Despite the late start, we dropped the sails and crossed the Mooloolaba bar just as the sun was setting. The bar itself presented no problems, but the school of fledgling outrigger-paddlers who straggled unheedingly across the entrance in front of us did cause us a few heart-in-mouth moments. In the end they sorted themselves out and got out of our way in good time, which was just as well because by then we were nigh-on unstoppable, lined up with the channel leads and being sucked in by the tide.

We chugged our way gently through the deepening dusk, and dropped our anchor in a few metres of water just a few boat-lengths away from Pelagic.

Mud Island

We were intending to head back to our old anchorage by the Sandhills dunes, but in order to get there we had to first round Mud Island, a long flat sandbank close to the Brisbane River shipping channel. As we came out of the lee of the island we got into some swell that had been building up as the wind crossed the bay from the other side.

The Sandhills anchorage is very picturesque, but it is rather exposed and does suffer rather from swell, particularly when the tide changes. Not only was Mud Island acting as a buffer for the south easterly swell, but it was also closer to the Main Channel that we would be taking in the morning, so we tucked in behind it and dropped the anchor.

The dinghy was absolutely filthy from its continual dunkings in the swamp mud at the Botanical Gardens, so I took advantage of our early stop to haul it up on a halyard and scrub it out.


CLEANING THE SWAMP OUT OF THE DINGHY

The shallow anchorage also meant that most of our chain was still in the anchor locker. I’d been waiting for a chance to work on it, so I sat on the bow and hauled it out onto the deck. Pindimara’s original chain had been marked every 5 metres by coloured spray-paint, but this had quietly eaten away the galvanisation on the chain and suddenly, one day, it rusted into a big knot and we’d had to replace the whole thing.


THE EFFECT OF SPRAY PAINT ON A GALVANISED CHAIN

Not wanting to destroy our new chain with the same problem, we had marked the lengths with cable ties instead of spray paint, but were finding that these interfered with the smooth progress of the chain over the winch. In fact, while anchoring in the Brisbane River, the chain jumped completely off the gypsy and the whole seventy metres plummeted uncontrollably to the bottom. This was pretty alarming. Not only is there a lot of metal moving very fast alongside your feet, but the total stationary weight is about 100 kg and when it reaches the end, it can tear the D-ring right out so that you lose anchor, chain, and possibly quite a lot of hull. Only a couple of weeks previously I’d taken the precaution of adding a loop of tripled springy silver rope to the end of our chain, so all I could do was stand there and keep my toes clear and wait to see whether it would bounce or snap.

Luckily it held, but it was time to get rid of the cable ties. To this end I obtained some water-based acrylic paint, reasoning that it might not contain quite as many noxious chemicals as the spray variety. As the sun set behind and the moon rose over Mud Island in front, I sat on the fore-deck and painstakingly brushed on two coats of primer and two coats of colour, while trying very hard not to spill any paint. This started to get quite difficult when a surprise wind blew up, thrashing the boat around and splashing me with spray. I clumsily tied down the wet and sticky chain so that it wouldn’t fall over the side, and went below for dinner.


JACKSON POLLOCK, EAT YOUR HEART OUT

The sea started to get pretty sloppy. As we climbed into bed later that night, we were very glad that we were not in the open water on the other side of the bay.

Urban Life

It was nice to catch up with friends, but the attractions of the bright lights wore off pretty quickly. I hadn’t really noticed before, but it’s hard to buy anything useful inside a city. I needed some plumbing parts and miscellaneous chandlery. Bronwyn wanted a shower and a laundry. We found some inexpensive toilet rolls, a haircut and some discounted novels, but otherwise there was precious little of value to the visiting cruiser.

It’s been less than two months since we quit our careers and started sailing, but I was surprised to find how hard it was to relate to urban life. I was being bombarded with solutions that I didn’t need to problems that I didn’t have. Even the process of going out for a meal or a beer seemed needlessly over-complicated, and it was always a relief to return to the boat where she bobbed quietly on the edge of the swamp at the Botanical Gardens.

We’d been in Brisbane for a week, and we’d seen everybody who wanted to visit us, so it was time to move on. Unfortunately we were almost completely out of both fuel and water, and we hadn’t found anywhere where we could obtain either of those two essentials. Luckily we remembered that we’d seen a fuel bowser downriver at the city limits, so hoping that (a) it was open on Sunday, and (b) that it had drinking water, we hauled up the anchor and set off. We figured that we had enough fuel to make it that far, and if it was closed, then we’d tie up and go to sleep until it opened on Monday.

It was great to be moving again. The sun was shining and we got to see a lot of details that we’d missed on our arrival, when we’d been more concerned about lining up the leading lights in the gathering dusk. The great wool stores from the early 1900s were particularly impressive, enormous blocky brick buildings that seemed to run for miles. Presumably these used to be dockside facilities, but a great many slender modern houses have been squeezed onto what must be a new, reclaimed waterline, each with its own personal dock, although the docks were usually empty.

The fuel dock under the Gateway Bridge not only had water, but also very cheap diesel, which was quite a surprise especially when the attendant confirmed that this was now the only fuel dock left in the Brisbane area. On our travels we’ve come across dockside diesel that is almost twice the price of its roadside equivalent. I began to relax, and spent a happy half hour chatting to the attendant while Bronwyn filled the water tanks.

Fuelled and watered, we let the tide suck us down the shipping channel and out into Moreton Bay. The heat of the sun, the direction of the wind, the depth of the water, the course of the yacht ahead of us; these were important, these were reality. I felt the gritty crowded feel of the city slip away, and danced a little jig at the helm while Bronwyn rustled up some fresh home-made won-ton soup in the galley. When she brought the steaming aromatic bowls up into the cockpit, she remarked that this was the first time that she’d seen me properly smiling all week. I don’t think that she was joking.

Brisbane

We remained anchored in Moreton Bay for a few more days until all the weekend visitors had gone, and then hoisted our sails and headed across to the mouth of the Brisbane River. We had a nice beam reach at a consistent eight knots. Pindimara never used to go this fast. Either the boat’s changed, or we have.

We’d been keeping half an eye on some distant rain clouds which were scudding past out to sea, and about half way across the bay we noticed a twister dropping down from the cloud base. We double-checked and it was definitely passing by outside the bay, but it was quite a fascinating sight. Neither of us had ever seen one before.


TWISTER!

We have been following the blogged exploits of another cruiser, Bob on Capricorn, who is also circumnavigating in a Bavaria but quite a few months ahead of us. In fact he had been coming up the NSW coast behind us, and when the waterspout formed, he was unlucky enough to be on the other side of Moreton Island and directly beneath it. His furler jammed and he got very wet, but luckily survived the experience without injury.

We arrived at the main Brisbane shipping channel and dropped sails for the long motor up the river to the city centre. We were sharing the relatively narrow lane with some seriously large commercial shipping, although they were travelling slowly to minimise their bow waves and some had time to wave cheerfully from the flying bridge.

Much of the first part of the Brisbane River is taken up by LPG tanker facilities, and the smell of leaking gas was pretty strong. On the other hand, there was lots to see and the depths and leading lights were uniformly excellent. Several hours later we found ourselves chugging underneath the girders of Story Bridge and into the heart of Brisbane itself.


PINDIMARA ARRIVES AT BRISBANE CBD

Many cruising guides mention the cheap pile berths by the Botanical Gardens, but we were aware of a lot of discussion in blogs and fora that suggested that they were permanently clogged with old hulks. We telephoned the Port Authority who run the pile berths, and they were quite definite that not only were the berths only for short term transient cruisers, but that there were currently a number of berths free, and gave us a list of berth numbers.

On our arrival, though, it was quite clear that not only were there no free berths, but that quite a number of boats didn’t look like they had been capable of moving for some years.


OBVIOUSLY SEAWORTHY

We dropped anchor around the bend and found good holding close to some mangroves, and when we later investigated the pile berths on foot, we found a large sign stating that the berths were available for a monthly rate, directly contradicting our Port Authority spokesperson.

It’s all worked out well because we’re very happy with our anchorage, which is only a short row from a Botanical Gardens piling where, with a little acrobatic effort at low tide, we can tie up our dinghy in safety and stroll into town, where we’ve been meeting up with various friends, and have drunk far too much expensive Belgian beer for our budget.


PINDIMARA OFF GARDEN POINT

The city’s been a bit of a shock to the system. Each morning the joggers sprint past as fast as they can with a desperate look in their eyes and headphones jacked into their ears. In the streets, everybody is hurrying around without paying any attention to anything. When we sit down in a cafe, waitresses rush up before we have a chance to get comfortable, and we find that we are infringing rules about who can sit where and when. We’re finding it all a bit manic, even Bronwyn who is a self-avowed city kid and was looking forward to some bright lights. It is strange to think that only a few short months ago we were part of this same madding crowd, but already that whole life seems impossibly remote.

Sand surfing on Moreton Island

Anchored just off the ‘Sandhills’ dunes of Moreton Island, we grabbed our boogie boards and decided to try our hand at sand-surfing.


THE SCENE: KOUNUNGAI, MORETON ISLAND

After a great deal of hilarity, Bronwyn reckoned that I finally made the transition from computer geek to surfer boy, and posted this video of my biggest ride:
VIDEO: SAND SURFING (3.2 Mb)

Digitally signed by the puppeteer:

Running Blind

The official Hydrographic chart of Moreton Bay shows two beaconed channels that lead from the sea and through the shifting sand shoals to the bay itself. The biggest is the North West Channel, which is dredged to at least 15 metres and carries large cargo and cruise liner traffic to Brisbane. This can only be accessed from the far north of the entrance, some five hours away from our current position as we bobbed around in the rain, swell and darkness. Much closer to us was the North East Channel, and connecting us to it were two unmarked but still navigable channels known as the Inner and Outer Freeman. The Inner Freeman was far too shallow and had a notorious bar, but the Outer Freeman seemed to offer us good depths all the way across, apart from a bit at the far end where it dropped to six metres of shifting sands at either of two spurs that lead onto the North East Passage. With our 2 metre keel, this still gave us at least 4 metres of clear water even at the lowest tide.

The downside of this plan, of course, was that it was pitch dark and pouring with rain, and we were tired and had never been here before. On the other hand, our chart was only a month old and we had practised navigating with GPS at close quarters in the Solitary Islands. We really needed to get out of the swell, which was making us sick. We decided to go for it.

Navigating Pindimara by instruments requires co-ordinated teamwork and perfect trust. At the helm, Bronwyn was driving completely blind, focussed on steering a course by compass alone. This is very difficult. Usually you pick a distant object on the required bearing and aim for it, but Moreton Bay at night is a very confusing place. The shoaling area alone covers over a hundred square miles and is criss-crossed with channel markers and scattered with warning beacons both far and near, providing the helm with a shifting landscape of colour with few stable markers. Bronwyn’s only option was to stare eagle-eyed at the red glow of the compass and to try to compensate for drift and windage.

Down below, my whole world consisted of a small blinking cursor that represented our GPS position on the chart, and the shouted depth soundings from the helm. I had to judge from the cursor’s continually updated orientation and position how we were being affected by any currents or rips, and to call up course amendments as required, as well as trying to interpret Bronwyn’s depth soundings in the light of the chart contours in front of me. Every few minutes I would pop my head out of the companionway and take a compass bearing on one of the few static lighthouses as backup; electronics can fail, and charts can be wrong.

At first (after a short break when I had to run up on deck and lose my dinner over the side) it all went well, with the depth soundings corresponding well to the chart. We successfully negotiated a couple of unseen shoals, and were approaching the zone of 6 metre shifting sands. It was time to decide whether to take the relatively wide northerly passage, or the more southerly gutter. The latter was two miles long and only 500 metres wide, but would cut an hour off our journey time. It was already midnight. The currents were manageable. We headed south.

The bottom rose rapidly as the sides of the gutter closed in. Just as we passed the 6 metre contour, Bronwyn called out “four”, which was perfect because the sounder measures depth from the bottom of our 2 metre keel. I breathed a sigh of relief. The gutter was where it was supposed to be.

A following current began to push us along. Bronwyn called out “Three” and then “Two”. I stared at the chart, which showed us perfectly centred in the six-metre gutter. The sand must have shifted. We had a hasty discussion and agreed that if we came too close to bottoming out – or indeed hit – then Bronwyn would turn sharply to port and try to retrace her course, although this was going to be increasingly difficult as the current continued to sweep us along. We knew that on either side of us, invisible in the darkness, were the two large and impenetrable Venus Banks. Presumably either one or both had been leaking or drifting into the gutter. Bronwyn called out “One point eight!”

We were one mile in, with another mile to go. If we made it through, then we would emerge right on top of a flashing red channel marker delineating the edge of the North East Channel. I called up the bearing, and Bronwyn said that she couldn’t see the light. I ran up on deck with a couple of check bearings on surrounding lighthouses, but we seemed to be exactly where we were supposed to be, albeit in scarily shallow water. Perhaps the red beacon was somehow hidden behind a sand bank. Perhaps.

How deep were we now? One point six metres. This wasn’t so good. We were running blind deep in a maze of continually shifting channels, in the pitch dark in the middle of the night; our gutter was steadily disappearing from under us and the channel that we were heading for had gone missing.

I know how scary it is to be driving blind when you know that you’re lost, so summoning my best confident voice I called up course corrections to port and to starboard to see if by some miracle I could find deeper water. Bronwyn, on the other hand, knows how scary it is to be sitting there extemporising when your tools have failed and everything depends on you, so she omitted to mention that we now only had 60 centimetres under the keel. The minutes passed as we quested back and forth, sometimes a bit deeper and sometimes a bit shallower, never quite hitting the bottom but never quite gaining any depth. Then at about 1 am Bronwyn called “Two metres! Three!” and we were through.

There was still no sign of the beacon, even though it was supposed to be only 500 metres away, so I called a course change that would bring us out right on top of it. We arrived, and there was nothing there. Where was the channel?

We put the motor into neutral and drifted under our triple-reefed main in what the chart said was the middle of the North East Channel. There should have been a line of coloured beacons stretching out to the north, but although the far horizon sparkled with other lights, our channel was nowhere to be seen. The Port Authority must have removed the markers without informing the Hydrographic Survey, because our chart had only been updated a month before.


THREADING THE NEEDLE AT MORETON BAY

Here and there in the darkness we could make out the riding lights of tinnies and small fishing boats, and occasionally one would shine a torch at us in apparent disbelief. What on earth is that great big yacht doing out here?

We couldn’t drift forever in these conflicting currents, so we went back to our instruments. Luckily the southernmost end of the North Eastern Channel was originally marked not by a navigation marker but by a westerly danger light, which was still in place. This gave us a friendly flashing point to aim for, and within half an hour we had squeezed between the danger marker and Moreton Island and were within clear sight of the main, North Western Channel.

The main channel was packed with seriously large container ships and cruise liners, edging slowly through the darkness and probably terrified of running down a fisherman. We chose to stay well away, and went looking for somewhere to anchor.

The obvious places were along the edge of Moreton Island, but first we needed to pass over a dumping ground for unexploded military ordinance. After that we tried for Sholl Bank at Tangalooma, but the anchor bounced off impenetrable gravel. At least it gave us a chance to drop the mainsail. It was three o’clock in the morning and we were very, very tired.

We pored over the chart, and settled on a remote and fairly sheltered bay about eight miles away. We worked our way through the last of the shoals and into Moreton Bay proper, where we found ourselves bashing into enormous head-on swells. We were so tired now that we were motoring in thirty-minute shifts, grabbing alternate naps in the cockpit in between.

The first tinges of dawn touched the horizon ahead, and I simultaneously spotted the shore-based navigation light at Kounungai which marked our chosen anchorage. This piece of Moreton Island was supposed to be uninhabited, so what were all those extra white lights along the shore?

The dawn light grew stronger and I started to laugh out loud. They were the mast-head anchor lights of other boats! Obviously the holding was good. We dropped the pick in ten metres and, ignoring the bouncing swell, fell into a long, deep and exhausted sleep.

Having a Swell Time

We left the Gold Coast on the dawn tide.

I just love that expression. It sounds like something out of an old pirate movie. In actual fact, with the tide turning at dawn, and wanting to wait for at least the third hour of flood before crossing the bar, what it really meant is that we had a leisurely breakfast, prepared the boat for sea, and were lifting anchor at about ten o’clock. But “leaving on the dawn tide” sounds so much more impressive.

We had no problems going out of the Gold Coast Seaway, apart from… “…are those people in the water?”. A quick check with the binoculars revealed that there were indeed a number of surfers swimming across the bar entrance, in amongst the continual trawler, fishing and yacht traffic. Crazy. But a passing police launch manoeuvred politely around one pair who were doggedly paddling down the main channel, so I suppose that this must be normal Surfers Paradise behaviour.

Despite our careful timing of the tide, there was still a bit of an incoming rip, presumably due to some kind of tidal overrun. Bronwyn kept the power on hard coming out of the bar (no smoke! A change of oil and cleaning the air filter seemed to have fixed that one) while I went down into the saloon to check on the location of the nearby shoaling reefs. Once out on the open sea, Bronwyn kept powering directly into incoming the swell, running up each wave and launching off the top to drop into the face of the next one. Down below, I was trying to stay on the chart table seat while juggling a pile of eIectronics and paperwork, and I had some idea of what it must be like to go over the Niagara Falls in a barrel.

I was feeling a bit battered when I emerged blinking into the sunlight, as we rounded the shoals and set off northward, heading for Moreton Bay and Brisbane. It was a beautiful day and we had a perfect light following wind. We experimented for a bit with flying the jib only, just to see what it was like, but quickly switched to the main and found ourselves running at six to eight knots. The only slight difficulty was a quartering swell which made steering quite an energetic task. When the swell approaches the boat on a diagonal, you have to corkscrew up and down each face as it passes under the boat. Still, we were fresh and rested and I enjoyed the exercise for a while before turning control over to the tireless Harriet.

Being used to the NSW forecasts which only try to predict swell heights to within the nearest metre or so and are often wildly inaccurate (eg “Swell: SE 1 to 2 metres” may well turn out to be more than 3), we were quite amused to see that the Queensland forecast was a bit more precise; apparently we could expect to be sailing in exactly 1.7 metres of swell.

VIDEO: STEERING THROUGH QUARTERING SWELL (1.1Mb)

There were very few marine hazards shown on the charts, so we just concentrated on sailing as straight a line as possible. The Eastern Australian Current did have one last go at us around one headland, but after that it seemed to give up. Cashing in on this bonus, we decided to head straight across one large bay instead of hugging the coast, because that would put the swell directly behind us and to tell the truth we were getting a bit tired of the constant pounding. As we got into deeper water, a combination of fair winds and following surf got us up to eight knots, and we had to revise our timetable. We had planned to sail through the night so that we would arrive at Moreton Bay in daylight to negotiate the shoals across the entrance, but it looked like we were going to arrive much earlier, in the middle of the night.

Keeping a lookout, I saw a squall racing towards us and shouted to Bronwyn, who was preparing a meal in the galley. She calmly asked me for a time check for her rice. Exactly seven minutes later we were triple-reefed and back on track, and Bronwyn went back down and took the rice off the stove just as the squall hit us with 35 knots and a flurry of rain. As soon as it had passed, dinner was served.


BRONWYN ON WATCH IN THE RAIN

The rain and the swell kept on harrying us but Pindimara was flying, and by late evening we were approaching the notorious Moreton Bay shoals in pitch darkness and zero visibility. One option would be to stand out to sea and wait for dawn, but we were feeling battered and bruised and just wanted to get out of the swell, so we hove to and got out the charts.

Surfers Paradise

As well as the official marine charts produced by the Hydrographic Office, we have also been using the coastal cruising guides written by local sailor Alan Lucas. His books (Cruising the NSW Coast, Cruising the Coral Coast) are useful but frustrating, comprising impeccably detailed research and surveys combined with often opaque or downright misleading editorial and layout. Still, they are a tremendous help and typically begin where the official charts leave off, being full of details and charts of otherwise uncharted inland waters.

We were particularly interested to see that Lucas has travelled in his own yacht up inland waters from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane, and had painstakingly surveyed and charted a route that seemed to be of sufficient depth for Pindimara, as long as we were careful to travel through a couple of shallower zones at the top of the tide.


THE RIVER CHANNELS FROM SURFERS TO BRISBANE

However, Lucas’ surveys were done in 2003 in a boat with much shallower draft, and the rivers run over continually shifting sands, so we called the local Marine Rescue patrol and asked for their local advice. Often these groups are not keen to offer specific advice, but on this occasion after some muffled discussion they told me that their unanimous opinion was that our keel was too deep and that they advised against it. We were a bit disappointed, but we’ll go with the experts.

In the meantime, then, we are sitting at anchor in Surfers Paradise, a rather strange and artificial concoction of high-rise holiday homes, beaches, and amusement parks. It’s not exactly quiet due to the continual howl of high-performance engines from sea-doos, jet-boats, helicopters, float planes, and speed boats from the adjoining Sea World amusement park, but there’s certainly a lot to see while bobbing around in the sun.

JUST PASSING BY AT SURFERS PARADISE

COCKTAILS AT SURFERS PARADISE

 

Arrival at Queensland’s Gold Coast

The wind died in the morning, but we persevered until we were completely becalmed and then turned the motor on. It took most of the day to chug up to Queensland and the Gold Coast Seaway (an artificial channel leading into the river system), where unfortunately the tide was out across the bar. We pored over the charts and decided that there was just about enough depth for us to get in, so long as we didn’t veer from the channel. Actually sticking to the channel proved to be a little exciting because the fishing trawlers were coming out, and they were deploying their tackle inside the breakwater which made them very wide indeed.

We managed to dodge around them, although we did attract the attention of a great number of black helicopters which kept buzzing our mast. They didn’t have coastguard markings, so we ignored them. Maybe they were impressed by our outstanding seamanship.

After a couple of moments with only a metre of water under the keel (I was having kittens at the helm while Bronwyn was very calmly reading out the seconds until the next turn), we felt our way upriver and squeezed into a crowded anchorage outside Seaworld. I’m writing this at sunset with the barking of sealions in the background.

Escape from Iluka

Bronwyn’s homework assignment was finished and we were champing at the bit to move on. Pindimara was even growing roots, and I spent one morning scrubbing them off. We had enjoyed our stay in Iluka and had had some fun times with local people here and there and our friends on Pelagic, but it was a relief to catch the morning tide and sail across the bar and out into the open sea. It was a bonus to do it under a clear blue sky over glassy smooth water virtually unruffled by the perfect breeze.

The day continued as fun as it started. We were close-hauled and doing 5-6 knots, even managing to hitch-hike on a couple of the mystical ‘reverse currents’ that run sporadically and unreliably up the coast here. Pods of dolphins passed by, heading south. Fighter pilots flew training circuits around the boat, and one even waggled his wings at Bronwyn when she waved. The sun shone. We smiled a lot.

As evening fell, we found ourselves sailing across a wide bay south of Ballina. The off-watch prepared food, each according to their ability. I made Bronwyn a peanut-butter sandwich. She made me a warm chicken and cous-cous spinach salad.

Bronwyn went to bed to get some rest before the night passage, and I started to put in some long tacks to get around the Ballina headland. Out there in the deeps, my old enemy the Eastern Australian Current was lurking, robbing me of two knots and making the easterly tacks pretty hard to judge. For about half an hour, I’m pretty sure that I made no progress at all.

Still, there was a lot to be happy about. I was sailing again, and I’d just finished – thanks to Bronwyn – an excellent supper of home-made meatballs with freshly baked sourdough bread, hot out of the oven. An orange sliver of crescent moon sank slowly beneath the sea. I turned down the lights on the cockpit instruments and lay back on deck to admire the stars. The sky was packed with them. Not just in the Milky Way, which was gloriously spectacular, but also from horizon to horizon I was hard pushed to find the smallest patch of empty black sky. Both of the island galaxies were there, and big fat shooting stars were dropping from the north.

There were stars in the sea, too. Phosphorescent micro-organisms were being churned up in our wake, leaving a line of bright fairy lights in the water on either side.

Magic.

Hello John, Got A New Motor?

Before we left Sydney, somebody – we can’t remember who – predicted that we wouldn’t make it far up the Queensland coast before I got fed up with rowing everywhere and bought an outboard motor for the tender. Up to now I’ve been happy to use the oars, but these last few weeks of wind and tide have forced me to reconsider. Having had some not so wonderful experiences with an old second-hand outboard, we bit the bullet and bought a brand new Yamaha 3 horsepower 2-stroke.

It’s been a ball. We drove it straight out of the shop and over the river to an uninhabited little island near to Yamba, just because we could.

That was yesterday. Today, while Bronwyn’s been working on her CAD assignment, I’ve been running back and forth to the shore, fetching water to fill our tanks, as well as going for the odd burn around the bay just for the absolute hell of it.

And I’ve had to learn new tricks. For instance, now that our dinghy has an engine sticking out underneath, I can’t just run it up onto the shore, jump out and tie it up like I’ve been used to. Instead, I’ve bought a small anchor, and the sequence goes something like this: Approach shore, avoid weed and rocks, look for a shallow bit, slow down, lift the engine halfway out of the water, chug inshore until my nerve gives out, throw the anchor, put the engine in neutral, and step out into the sea. If it’s too deep, I haul on the anchor rope until I float over to the anchor, pull it out of the water, throw it a bit further, repeat. This manoeuvre is called “kedging” and is remarkably effective. We just hope that we never have to do it with the yacht.

The motor is brand new, but doesn’t run very well at the moment because we’re using up the old and dirty fuel in our fuel can. We’re kind of stuck with this, as there isn’t a socially acceptable way of disposing of old fuel (chuck it in the sea and set light to it?), so we just have to keep using it up until it’s gone and then we can replace it with good stuff. Shouldn’t be long now.

Meanwhile, I’ll just pop over to the breakwater with the camera to see if I can photograph any lizards.

Still here!

We popped out to the heads yesterday to have a look at the bar. Even under what would normally be ideal conditions of tide, it was completely impassable. Enormous white-capped green rollers were breaking across the whole width of the channel. Great for a professional surf competition, perhaps, but not so good for our little boat. Even the fishing trawlers are staying in harbour. Looks like we’re not leaving the Clarence River any time soon.

Our Ampair wind generator started squeaking in the night. I took it down and disassembled it to reveal a worn bearing. I contacted the manufacturer in England, because it’s only nine months old and we’ve had some other problems with it before. They’re sending us a new unit, but we don’t want to have to wait for it in Iluka, so we’re getting it delivered to an address further up the coast in Brisbane (thanks, Kate) and in the meantime I’ve dropped our shaft into the local machine shop to see if they can source us a new bearing.

In other news… it’s wet, it’s windy, and it’s even a bit cold. We’re still here, but we’re getting a lot of schoolwork done. We’ve used up all our internet allowance for the month, so the last couple of blog updates have come to you via satellite. It’s nice to know that the technology is working, because we are likely to need it around the top end.

Gales, Water and Wine at Iluka

The next batch of weather has rolled in across the Tasman Sea, bringing heavy winds and rain. Although the ocean wind speeds are finally dropping to 30 knots, the gales have left a legacy of four-metre swells, so we’re staying put until either the wind or the swell dies down a bit. Since we’re now at the northern end of the Bureau of Meteorology’s New South Wales report, we have been peeking at the southern end of the Queensland report. We notice with some jealousy that the Queenslanders have perfect sailing weather; if only we could make it around that last corner!

After so long at anchor and unwilling to risk slamming up against hard 
fishing jetties in the high winds, we were running very low on water. 
We couldn’t use our water-maker because the bay is thick with eroded 
mud from upriver, so while Bronwyn explored the town, I spent an afternoon rowing back and forth in 25-
knot squalls to the nearest caravan park, repeatedly filling our 20
 litre jerry-can and emptying it into our echoing 150 litre forward 
tank. Pouring water from a jerry-can into a small hole in a pitching
 deck is exciting to say the least, especially when much of the working 
space is taken up by our emergency spare anchor (which is set up ready 
to be dropped in case the main one drags in the bad weather). Despite 
losing several litres here and there as the wind whipped the pouring
 stream over the side and into the anchor locker, I got the forward 
tank three quarters full before Bronwyn returned to shore with six 
bags of provisions and two sacks of clean washing.

Although the dinghy was quite heavily loaded, I reckoned that I’d be 
OK because I had the turning tide working for me, but half way back to 
the boat a headwind blew up and I found that I couldn’t make any
progress at all. The Walker Bay doesn’t row very well with weight in 
the stern, so Bronwyn suggested that we row side-by-side instead. We
 have often done this in the sheltered bays of Pittwater, and after
 some hilarious circular routes we have become quite proficient at it. 
Usually Bronwyn takes the starboard oar and rows with both hands,
 while I sit with one arm around her waist and one on the port oar, both
 stroking and steering. We hadn’t tried it in heavy weather before, but 
we quickly found that with all the weight in the centre and both of us
 pulling hard we skimmed across the wave-tops.

The reason that we so urgently needed water and supplies was that we 
were entertaining our Alaskan friends Alisa and Mike with their 
young son Elias from the neighbouring yacht Pelagic. We made it back
to Pindimara in the nick of time and were able to quickly clean up and
 start cooking before they arrived. After some initial excitement when 
Pelagic’s tender’s new outboard failed in the wind and rain just short 
of us, we had a great evening of laksa, wine, cake and conversation. 
One advantage of the continuous wind was that the wind generator kept 
on pumping out power and we managed to keep the cabin lights and hi-fi 
speakers working the whole time.

A night of rain brought the welcome sight of a dinghy full to the 
brim, so we nipped out in a gap between squalls and pumped all that 
precious sweet water into the aft tank.

Waiting at Iluka

The bay at Iluka is a pleasant enough anchorage, and it is but a short row to the local pub and shop. More northerly winds were forecast shortly after we arrived, and we had to catch up on some schoolwork, so we decided to stay a while.


The winds improved, but we had some more work to do both for university and on the boat, so we stayed a few days longer, and now we’re waiting out a 40-knot gale that is expected to last all weekend. Luckily the holding here is very good, because the boat is being thrown around like a child’s toy even inland behind two breakwaters.

It hasn’t been all work work work. Iluka has a very pleasant walk that leads you to the impressive sandstone bluffs via an unusual beach rain forest (“beware the shiny-leaved stinging tree”) and back via the very long beach itself. We’ve done the walk in both directions, and on one occasion came back through the rain forest at night. As our eyes became adjusted to the gloom, we realised that there were little scattered spots of fairy light both in the undergrowth and up in the trees. Thinking that they were glow-worms, we sneaked up on one with our trusty wind-up torch, and switched it on to reveal that we were actually looking at phosphorescent mushrooms. Very cool.


On the other side of the channel is the slightly bigger town of Yamba. As well as indulging in a bit of tourism, we needed to buy some items that weren’t available in Iluka, so we took the ferry over. It was possible to take the yacht, but we didn’t like the look of either the channel depths or of the anchoring options at the other end. This was the first time that I regretted not having an outboard motor for the tender. The tidal flow would have made for rather too exciting a row to Yamba and back, but we could have motored the dinghy over without any problem.

Still, the ferry was very pleasant, and we had breakfast in the excellent Pot Belly Pie Shop (the serving lass was wearing a tight little T-shirt reading “I got my pot belly in Yamba”). I also badly needed some shorts to wear, having torn all my existing ones to shreds, so we dropped into one of the many surf shops to buy some board shorts, thinking that they probably had the right durability in sea water. Once we’d made our purchases, I found that there was something hard in one of the pockets, which turned out to be a very unusual combination comb and beer bottle opener. Welcome to the surfer lifestyle!


We had a nice day clambering about on the rocks, watching the surf and the surfers, fossicking in chandleries, and yes, looking for second-hand 3 horse power outboard motors. We didn’t find a motor (apparently nobody hereabouts would be seen dead with anything less than 75 hp) but we did get enough other bits and pieces to finally allow me to add some finishing touches to the sewage tank in the head, and a replacement pump so that I can finally change the engine oil.

But not today. It’s just a little bumpy at the moment.

The Solitary Islands

Since we’d spent much of the preceding evening steering by the flashing white light on South Solitary Island, we decided to go and have a look at it. Presumably the name is some sort of cartographer’s joke, because there are many islands, rocks and reefs in the “Solitary” group, and they are all close in to shore. Our cruising guide mentioned that there were moorings on most of the islands, and when – after our problems last night – we double-checked on the internet we found that the whole group was part of a marine park, that anchoring and fishing were forbidden, but that visitors were welcome to use the courtesy moorings which were rated for boats up to 13 metres. An afternoon walking about on an uninhabited island sounded like a grand plan, so we set off for South Solitary.

It was such a beautiful morning that we didn’t mind that all we had was a gentle nine-knot Northerly breeze. Petrels flocked around, and squabbled over their catch. A big black dolphin that escorted us yesterday came to say hello again, but at two knots we weren’t giving him much chance to play in the bow wave, so he didn’t hang around. The only other boat on the water was a local yawl who was also obviously heading for South Solitary, so we traded tacks with him until lunchtime, when the wind increased to the high twenties and we put in a reef. He didn’t, and forged ahead.

By the time we got to South Solitary, the wind was consistently strong and the waves were pounding on the sea cliffs. We couldn’t see any of the promised moorings, and even if we’d found one, we didn’t fancy going close enough in to pick them up. We could also see that there were some buildings attached to the lighthouse, so perhaps South Solitary was inhabited after all.


SOUTH SOLITARY ISLAND

Our old foe the Eastern Australian Current was back, making tacking progress very slow, so we decided to extend our shoreward tack and see if we could tuck behind – and maybe visit – and maybe stay on – South West Solitary Island (also known as Groper Islet), which lies less than a mile from shore. Both our Lucas guide and the Marine Parks website told us that anchoring was forbidden but that there were courtesy moorings here, too.

The northerly current was strong even close in, but we finally managed to tack along the southern, sheltered side of Groper Island, where we could quite clearly see that there were no moorings at all. Making good use of our new charting software (Passage Plus, with the Australian Hydrographic Survey digital chart pack), we threaded our way through a number of reefs, shoals, breaking rocks, hidden rocks and other hazards which littered the small space between the island and the shore, before triumphantly emerging unscathed to tack along the north side of the island. There were no moorings there, either.

Evening was coming, so we gave up on our idea of overnighting on one of the Solitary Islands and began tacking in earnest to make some northing. Several hours passed as we zig-zagged back and forth between the 20 and 30 metre lines, heading Northward into a Northerly wind against a Northerly current, and then the wind died. The current was now dragging us backwards at over a knot, so it was almost a relief to give up and to start the engine. We were going to have to head further out into the stronger current now anyway, because the shoals shoreward from the next island, North West Solitary Island, looked far too complicated to thread at night. We set our sights on the white beacon on faraway North Solitary Island, and powered into the swell. That sounds exciting, but even though we were motoring at over 5 knots, we were only making 2.5 knots over the ground. It was going to be a long night.


MOST OF THE TIME THE GPS IS OFF,
SO MOST OF THE TACKS AREN’T SHOWN

We settled into our usual night watch pattern of two and a half hours on, two and a half hours off. Pindimara is set up for single-handed cruising, which means that the helmsman doesn’t need to set foot in the cockpit proper in order to control the boat; everything can be done from the wheel. This leaves the cockpit clear, and it has become one of our favourite sleeping spots on night passages. We put down a soft mat and an inflatable cushion, and then sleep completely dressed in our sailing gear and still in harness. Being on the centreline, any rolling motion is minimised, and we are always available to leap suddenly into action if required. As a bonus, when we open our eyes we get to see the Milky Way.

I woke at around midnight when we were just coming abreast of North Solitary Island. We needed to do a bit of careful navigating to avoid a couple of nearby shoals, and then we knew that there wouldn’t be any more danger spots until half past four. Bronwyn went down to the forecabin for a proper sleep, and I motored on against the current.

Apart from the tedium, the main problem with hand-steering under motor is that your bum gets very sore from sitting on the hard wooden helmsman’s seat. Under sail, you get to move around every so often, to trim the sails or look at the view or just to stretch your legs. Properly balanced, the boat is quite capable of sailing itself for surprisingly long distances even with Harriet turned off, but under power it is much less forgiving and you need to keep a firm hand and quite an eagle eye on the compass.

I tried a few different arrangements before finding that I could lie on a soft cushion up in the aft corner, drape my arms over the targa rail, and steer using one of my feet while still being able to see the compass and the sea ahead. Much better.


NIGHT WATCH

Time passes remarkably quickly on watch. A few hours went by, and we swapped places. Usually we just sleep until we hear the sails flapping or a bad drop off a swell – a sure sign that the helmsman is getting tired – but this time I set my alarm for 4 am so that we could tackle the next shoal together. Since the tidal stream was still pushing us backwards and sideways, it was difficult to steer a course in the dark that would ensure that we stayed out of trouble, so it was much easier for one of us to steer and for the other to call out new headings from the GPS and chart computer.

Once clear of the shoal, Bronwyn headed for bed and I sat and looked forward to the dawn. It rained a little, but our ever-so-expensive targa is brilliant at keeping the helm dry, and in any case I had my sailing gear on. The hours passed, the skies cleared, and the first vestiges of dawn touched the eastern sky.

The mind plays strange tricks when you’re tired, and I find it particularly hard to judge the wind direction at the end of a watch. However, since we were still motoring along into a mild 9-knot /northerly headwind, it wasn’t terribly important. On one of my regular sweeps of the horizon I suddenly noticed a tall black sail silhouetted against the pre-dawn horizon. He was far, far out, and was not showing any running lights. Idly I wondered where he’d come from; had he tried to beat the current by going dozens of miles to seaward, or was he perhaps arriving from New Zealand? Perhaps he wasn’t showing any lights because his batteries had died overnight, or perhaps he was so far away that for him it was already dawn and he’d switched them off. In either case, this part of the coast is all wilderness and he was going to be disappointed when he found out that he’d come in ten miles short of Iluka and would have to spend the next few hours tacking up the coast.

I chugged on, hoping that the rising sun would give me a change of wind. Every ten minutes or so I checked over my shoulder, and I could still just make out the dark shape coming toward me. The next time that I looked, his profile had changed and although he was still many miles away, he was now heading north up the coast. I wondered how on earth he’d managed that, since he was now going directly into a headwind, and pondered idly on dark ghost ships passing in the night.

Suddenly I realised that, of course, that the reason that he’d turned was that the wind had changed and we suddenly had a nice beam reach all the way to Iluka. I undid the preventer on the main sail, unfurled the headsail, killed the engine and gratefully accepted a blissfully silent four knots of speed. I glanced over to my dark companion to see how he was doing. The sun had now risen in a blaze of orange and blue, giving me clear visibility from horizon to horizon, and there was no other boat in sight.


I SEE NO SHIPS


JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE

Hat Head to Coffs Harbour

We hadn’t got a great deal of sleep, but we’d had some rest and weren’t feeling at all sea sick. We decided to start the day with half a sea-sickness tablet each and then try to finally get our sea legs. We hoisted the sail (David’s method again working a treat) and set off up the coast, determined to hug the shoreline as close as we could to stay out of the pesky Eastern Australian Current. There wasn’t much wind, but we spent a pleasant couple of hours sailing along the beach, occasionally bumping over some of the curious steps in the sea level that are common hereabouts. Presumably the edges of underwater currents or rips, they are marked by trails of spume – often yellow – and a noticeable drop of several inches.

Our first navigation point was called Fish Rock, and it did look extraordinarily like a prehistoric lobe-finned fish, crawling out of the sea on its way to evolve some lungs.


FISH ROCK

At about lunchtime, though, the wind died completely and we reluctantly started the motor. Motoring on passage is very tedious; the boat pushes through the waves rather than moving with them, and we have to hand-steer because Harriet the Hydrovane needs the wind to function. Admittedly this is rather my fault; we do have an Autohelm unit that will automatically steer us under power, but I took it apart some months ago to fix a rattle, and never got around to putting it back together again. I hereby move it closer to the top of my list of “things to do when it’s quiet”. On the other hand, Bronwyn took advantage of the gentle chugging to proof some dough and bake some bread and a pizza for lunch.

After a splendid meal, we not only got our wind back, but also hit the semi-mythical northern current, a retrograde offshoot of the Eastern Australian that allegedly and occasionally runs northward close inshore. For the first time, our speed-over-ground was higher than our speed-through-the-water. The rest of the afternoon passed with alternate sailing and motoring until dusk, when we began to think seriously about stopping for the night instead of continuing with a night passage. Although the roadstead anchorage at Hat Head had given us a break and we weren’t feeling at all sea-sick (hurrah!) we were not feeling particularly enthusiastic about losing another night’s sleep, so we decided to stop at Coffs Harbour. Our cruising guide said that although the anchor holding at Coffs was terrible, there were courtesy moorings inside the harbour.

We were really grateful for our excellent new charts. Coffs is a blaze of vari-coloured and flashing lights, not only navigation markers but also multicoloured aircraft beacons and a plethora of lights on the shore. As we approached, we slowly ticked off all the different lights on our chart until we finally sorted out the wheat from the chaff, rounded the beacon on Korfs Islet and picked up the clear lead lights into the harbour. There’s no real bar at Coffs, and we surfed gently in on a swell.

There were no courtesy moorings. We tried to drop the anchor a couple of times, but the bottom seemed to be hard and flat and we couldn’t get it to bite. We called up the local Coastal Patrol on the radio, and they confirmed that there weren’t any moorings and suggested that perhaps we could try the fishermen’s public jetty inside the marina. We had a look and then squeezed in front of a large fishing boat, hard up against some massive wooden pilings constructed for boats made of steel and twice our size. Bronwyn did a fine job of manoeuvring us in under the amused and somewhat inebriated eyes of the fishermen. After that we slammed into the jetty a few times because there was a tricky swell that alternately pushed us into the un-fendered pilings and then dragged us away. It was a bit of a juggle to get the mooring lines right, but eventually I was happy and we grabbed something to eat and went to bed.


COFFS HARBOUR

We’d come in on the top of the tide, so as usual I set the alarm for the falling tide so that I could get up and check the lines. However, this wasn’t necessary because the low was heralded by a loud “crash” as our inflatable fenders shifted away from the pilings and allowed us to slam into the battered and pitted wood. After that, I was up and down every hour or so, discovering by trial and error that the best plan was to leave the fore and aft lines alone and simply play with the springers as the level changed. Finally the tide came back in and everything calmed down. I was just drifting off into my first deep sleep of the night when we were awoken by “Oy! Is anybody aboard? This is a working jetty, you know!”. It was a fishing charter arriving early to pick up passengers. He was hoping that we could move up a bit to let him squash in behind us, but I really couldn’t see how we were all going to fit, so we just cast off, motored into the main harbour, and bobbed about while we ate breakfast and prepared the boat for sea.

Escape from Camden Haven

At last, on Monday morning, the post that we had been waiting for arrived; a new bilge pump for the toilet and our set of digital charts from the Hydrographic Survey. We intended to leave Camden Haven on Tuesday’s dawn tide, but while checking the weather on Monday afternoon we found that Tuesday’s southerly change was going to be associated with gale-force winds. We decided to wait one more day and then follow the change up in the more well-mannered southerlies forecast for Wednesday. Since we’d already paid off and said our goodbyes at Dunbogan Marina, we went alongside the free jetty at the RSL instead.

I needed to pop into town to pick up some hose clamps for my ongoing toilet reinstallation, and Bronwyn wanted to pick up some food and medical supplies, so it was fairly inevitable that we ended up having a Guinness or two at the Laurieton Hotel. Two beers turned into eighteen (we know because the cash register was broken and the barmaid wrote them down on a post-it note) and very few of the urgent tasks were remembered that evening. We didn’t exactly make Wednesday’s dawn tide either, but we did end up being dragged down the channel in the overrun and spat out to sea before we were really ready.

In a previous blog, I commented on the tendency of our main halyard to wrap itself around everything when we try to hoist the mainsail in the slop at sea. David emailed us a suggestion, and we amended it to suit our boat and gave it a go; before leaving harbour, we attached the main halyard to the sail and then lay a length of it halfway back along the boom, tying it off there with a piece of rope (actually I achieved this balancing on the fore-deck while Bronwyn fought the tidal rip along the channel). When we got to sea, I just whipped away the rope along with the four normal sail ties. Bronwyn started the hoist from the helm, and by the time I’d nipped back to the cockpit I could take over and finish the job while Bronwyn concentrated on keeping us headed into wind. It worked a treat. Thanks, David.

I had previously decided that today was the day that I would wean myself off seasickness tablets. After all, we have to gain our sea-legs at some point. Maybe it was the Guinness, but the immediate result was that I spent most of the morning leaning over the rail and feeding the fishes. However, by ten o’clock I was feeling much more chipper, and launched the tow-generator. I reckoned that we would be needing the electricity, because we’d been stationary for a week and we now had to power one of the computers so that we could use our shiny new digital charts.

The tow line for the generator was a little kinked from our test run outside Sydney harbour, and we’d certainly never tried it at the speeds of which Pindimara was now capable, so we were a little surprised when the generator set up a noticeable but not objectionable hum. We were happy to note that at seven knots of boat speed we were getting seven amps of power, and were even more delighted when the dolphins seemed to find the spinning torpedo greatly fascinating, and spent almost half an hour playing with it.

By early afternoon, it was clear that our bold decision to head straight for the Clarence River some 160 miles away was being vetoed by the wretched East Australian Current, which was robbing us of a whole two knots however we tried to avoid it. As light fell, we were both feeling decidedly queasy and decided to call it a day at Hat Head, where we experienced our first ever ‘roadstead anchorage’, which is a grand name for hiding behind a big rock and dropping your anchor in the sea.

In retrospect, we could have dropped the pick a little farther from the beach. We arrived at high tide and the night started comfortably enough, but as the tide dropped the beach swells began to form to seaward of our position, which made the boat roll unpleasantly and had me up and down every couple of hours checking the anchor (and on one occasion resetting the snubber, which had come undone with a disconcertingly loud “bang”). Still, once the tide had come back in, we slept well enough.

The Mountain


PINDIMARA (second yacht from the right) AT THE
FOOT OF NORTH BROTHER (looks like rain…)

Laurieton, where we remain at anchor sheltering from the storms, is dominated by a 500-metre mountain called North Brother, but known locally as Brother or just The Mountain. The locals hold it in some affection. It breaks up the wind, they say, and is an effective weather vane; if the top is in cloud, then it is going to rain. This is perfectly reasonable because North Brother is the first high point encountered by any incoming moisture-laden sea wind, which will have to shed at least some of its load in order to rise over the top. The slopes are therefore covered with dense rain forest, and Laurieton has a healthy rainfall. One morning we pumped nearly half a tank of fresh sweet rainwater out of our dinghy and into our depleted tanks; we’d have easily filled the 150-litre tank if the bottom half of the boat hadn’t been a bit silty.

I have long held that humans are attracted to edges. If we see a lake, we go down to the edge and skip stones. If we see a beach, we go down to the sea and say that we are invigorated (and build retirement homes). If we see a cliff, we go to the edge (perhaps not too close… depending on the rubber band effect of your own personal manifestation of vertigo… but we still go) and look at the view.

This isn’t too surprising. Life is all about edges. Walk through a natural forest, and you’ll see that most of the action happens around the perimeter, where young trees can compete for resources and animals can see danger coming, and yet still hide from it. Deeper inside the forest, the number of species drops and the forest is relatively quiet (except where a glade opens up when a tree falls; but that’s another, newly created edge). At the microscopic level, almost all of our biochemistry is mediated at the surface of the catalyst molecules that we call enzymes. We evolved from the moon-ministered tidal zone at the edge of the sea. Go diving, and it is immediately obvious that most of the life is congregated either in that tidal zone, or in a reef band further out just before the bottom slopes away into the deeps. Most of the rest is underwater desert.

To a greater or lesser extent, then, we all seek edges. Our urban and social life has removed our access to the more natural ones, and so we make up our own. How far can I swim? How high can I climb? How fast can I drive my car without going out of control? How close can I get to earning my salary without working too hard? How far can I push him before he cracks?

Having sat in the same stretch of river for a week, and having fixed and maintained just about everything that could be fixed and maintained, I was becoming increasingly obsessed with the idea of climbing to the top of The Mountain. On one particular day, with yet another set of storm warnings, gale warnings, and general mayhem out to sea, I shouldered a backpack and set off.

On the way through Laurieton, I stopped to ask about a footpath. It seemed that there was one, but nobody knew quite where it was as they usually drove to the top, so I just headed uphill until I found a trail and a NSW Parks sign said that it was a hard four-hour return trip. I know from experience that NSW Parks always inflate their figures by at least 100%, although I have never been able to decide whether this is to discourage the uncertain or to challenge the determined. Be that as it may, I knew that I’d be up and back in a couple of hours, so I checked my watch. The temperature was in the high twenties, the humidity must have been in the eighties, and the sun was just reaching its zenith; perfect timing for an Englishman to go exploring. Humming Noel Coward, I set off up the hill.

The trail had been hacked directly toward the summit. It was bloody steep, and shored up here and there with tree-trunk steps. At first I leapt gazelle-like from bole to bole, thinking “Hah! Four hours my foot!”, but before very long I slowed to a more reasonable pace. Sweat began to pour down my back, so that I first rolled up my shirt and then took it off and put the soaking rag into my pack. Venerable gums towered above, with a dripping understory of ferns, cycads and ‘black boy’ grasses. Birds shrieked in sudden startlement as I passed by; from the reaction of the animals and from the deep fallen brush along the trail, I could see that not many people passed this way. The trees were mainly scribbly gums, their bark decorated by the intricate maps of burrowing beetles.


A MAP TO SHOW THE WAY? SCRIBBLY GUM ART

Every now and then, an igneous rock outcrop thrust through the soil and towered over my head, making the way slippery underfoot with loose eroded pebbles. I began to pant in the heat, and to wonder if I was going to make it, the legacy of too many months doing overtime in an office chair followed by days of sitting around doing schoolwork on the boat. I struggled on. I was glad to note that my heart wasn’t pounding and that my breathing was relatively normal, but I was sweating buckets and my legs had begun to go rubbery when I emerged blinking into a clearing that marked the top of the trail and the beginning of what was described as ‘the easy traverse’.

With sudden renewed energy I set off along the new path, which ran in a gladdeningly horizontal fashion before – horror of horrors – actually running downhill and robbing me of hard-gained altitude. Round the next corner came the punchline of the joke; the trail reverted back to the familiar vertical climb.

After an hour’s sweaty effort, I emerged suddenly onto a neatly grassed forty-five degree lawn which turned out to be a launch pad for hang gliders. Spinning around, I was presented with a view that made the whole thing worthwhile. Not just one edge, but three, if you included the distant beach and the even more distant horizon. Far below, I could just make out the shape of Pindimara bobbing on her mooring.


PINDIMARA (topmost rightmost yacht) AT THE
BOTTOM OF NORTH BROTHER, WITH LAURIETON
IN THE FOREGROUND AND THE CAMDEN HAVEN
BAR IN THE BACKGROUND

A half hour for lunch while I drank in the views. Edges are good for the soul.

Then back to the trail, initially running with sheer exuberance until my legs turned to jelly, and then a more cautious descent to sea level, which was in its own way just as much hard work as the journey up.

Back at the marina I took a shower and then stood on the dock looking at the yacht. Usually I would call Bronwyn on my mobile so that she could row over and get me, but today the Vodafone signal was unaccountably absent. As I waited to see if she would happen to appear on deck, I saw a small movement out of the corner of my eye, and crouched down to have a look. A small leech was inch-worming its way across the wooden planking, mouth parts eager and stretching at the top of each loop. I stepped back to let it go by, wondering what it was doing in such a bare and unfriendly environment. It came to the edge of a plank and then snuck down into a crack, whereupon I became aware of a lot of crimson splashing; there was fresh blood pouring down my lower leg. I couldn’t feel any pain, but when I wiped it away I could see a couple of fresh bite marks, so presumably I had been carrying more than just memories home from the rain forest.

Ah well. Salt water would fix it. I stashed my bags on the dock, and swam out to the boat.

Sojourn in Laurieton

Because of the inclement weather, we haven’t moved from Laurieton in Camden Haven. On the other hand, we would much rather be in here than out there. The news has been showing pictures of floods and mayhem; the locals are talking about boats dis-masted and abandoned, and the weather bureau reports wind speeds in excess of 60 knots and swells over 7 metres. All the while we have been bobbing more or less serenely at our mooring, although the wind did get a bit fresh now and again. One gust almost knocked us down in a flurry of flying crockery, and on another night although we couldn’t see our actual wind speed indicator (it’s on deck and we were warm and dry inside), our wind generator clocked 7 amps, which is a record and probably represents well over 40 knots.

The weather reports continued to broadcast doom and gloom, so we took a stroll down to the entrance bar to see what it looked like from the land. It was a pleasant walk past an enormous lagoon packed with oyster leases and along the causeway to the head, where we were greeted by shrieks and screams from the water. In fact it was only some kids boogie-boarding in the protection of the breakwater. They had some decent surf to play in, but the bar itself looked impassable, and the sea beyond was a maelstrom.


That night, I announced that rather than walk all the way around the bay, I would row us across the river to the pub, a distance of perhaps 300 metres. This would be the work of a moment on a flat lake or sheltered bay, but we had thus far avoided the attempt because of the fast-flowing tidal streams. It took me about an hour to row upstream to my rather well-deserved pint, and then, some hours later, about the same to row back in the dark against the now incoming tide. Not exactly a lesson learned, but certainly some calluses earned. Bronwyn will tell you with some glee that she even heard me muttering something about buying an outboard.

This is a pleasant spot to stop over. Flocks of pelicans follow the fishermen, and sea eagles float overhead. As well as the inevitable cleaning and maintenance tasks, we’ve been able to catch up and even get slightly ahead with our schoolwork, which has been particularly useful for Bronwyn because she suddenly found that in order to complete one particular assignment, she needs to learn how to use AutoCAD, which is not something you pick up in five minutes.

When the time came to go to the launderette (which is, again, across the river), we chose to take the whole yacht rather than just the dinghy, and to fill up with fuel, water and gas on the way. On that particular day, the marina was being manned by Graham, coxwain of the local Marine Rescue, and he was gracious enough to compliment us on our effortless docking in opposing wind and tide, commenting more than once that “not many yachties here could have pulled off a move like that”, which gave us a pleasant warm fuzzy feeling. Luckily we didn’t disgrace ourselves when docking at the Marine Rescue jetty opposite to offload the laundry, and we must have looked vaguely professional because Bob the radio operator invited us inside for coffee and a chat.

There was another cruising boat here, Liquid Motion, which we had seen in Port Stephens and which had arrived in Camden Haven shortly after us. We never did get to speak to the skipper, but we saw him attempt the bar shortly after we’d gone down to see it. He didn’t make it, and came back, but on the next tide he was gone, after what Bob called “a lumpy exit”. We wish him luck because he was heading straight into a nor’easter, but the word on the grapevine said that he was in a hurry to be gone.

We’re in no hurry; we’ll wait for nice friendly conditions before we leave. In fact, the weather is shaping us to give us a good start on the dawn tide on Tuesday, and we’re aiming to bypass all the urban centres such as Port Maquarrie and Coffs and go straight to Yamba, where we intend to spend a few days exploring the Clarence River.

Arrival at Camden Haven

As the hull speed dropped, we realised that there was quite a crowd of people watching us crossing the bar. They turned away looking a little disappointed, so I guess we must have made a clean entry. Now we just had to navigate the channel up to the anchorage, which we already knew was going to be very shallow. We did have a chart, but it bore the warning ‘Shifting sands change regularly. Ignore this chart and use the markers’. The channel was only a few boat lengths wide, and scattered with navigation buoys which led us a merry path back and forth with only a metre and sometimes less under the keel. One buoy took us very close to a fisherman on shore, who politely reeled in his line and then made humorous zig-zag motions with his hands.

I was simultaneously focussed on keeping the speed under 2 knots despite the following tide, and keeping an eagle eye on the depth sounder. That left Bronwyn to spot and call out the navigation buoys, a task made somewhat difficult by the fact that it was dusk and the automated switches that turned on their flashing lights were not particularly synchronised. Thus we would see two flashing port markers and a starboard, and then a minute later a previously unlit buoy which we had taken to be a sand bank marker would suddenly start flashing and change our route completely.

Eventually we fumbled our way to the end of the navigable channel in full darkness, dropped the anchor, and fell into a deep and undisturbed sleep.

The next morning I was awoken by the howl of full-bore outboards, and went on deck to see what seemed to be the whole local community going fishing, all racing their tinnies at full speed past the 4-knot speed limit signs. After the wakes had died away, I had a look around at our surroundings and found them to be very pleasant indeed. Oyster beds lined the shore, with drying sand banks here and there. To one side loomed Brother Mountain with an RSL (non Aussies – Retired Serviceman’s League, a kind of pub with cheap beer subsidised by gambling) and a fishing wharf, and to the other were a few houses and a small marina. All around were pelicans balanced comically on pilings, and a handful of other yachts, mainly apparently local and almost all much smaller than ours. No wonder we had stirred up so much interest when crossing the bar.


CAMDEN HAVEN, LOOKING UPSTREAM TO THE LAURIETON FISHING WHARF

High tide came, and with it a wicked overrun which pulled us out into mid stream and started dragging our anchor. We couldn’t get it to re-set, so we hauled it up and dropped it on the inside of a curve next to a sand bank, with only a metre of spare depth and one boat length from drying sand, so we thought it prudent to test our GPS anchor alarm. After a little experimentation and some trigonometry, we found that it worked very well indeed.

We knew that this new spot would become untenable at low tide, so we looked around for another option. There was deep water over by the RSL, but the only other visiting cruiser was already at anchor there, and he was spinning violently in circles and from side to side, apparently under control of his wind-vane, and we thought it prudent to stay clear. We phoned Michael and Judy, the owners of Dunbogan Marina, and were assured that there was deep water under their swing moorings. The price was very cheap, and they had a hot shower, so we motored in and picked one up. After staring at the blinking depth sounder for a while – there would only be 50 cm beneath us at low tide – we switched it off and resolved not to look at it again.

After setting up the wind vane and unlimbering the tender, we rowed to shore and had a long and enjoyable shower before walking to the RSL for a welcome Sunday roast and a few glasses of porter.

Port Stephens to Camden Haven

The forecast called for southerlies from Friday to Sunday, although there were strong wind warnings for the beginning of the change on Friday morning, along with three metre swells, abating in the afternoon. After that, it looked like we were going to get a nice 15-20 knot SE or S wind which should neatly take us to Coffs Harbour, about 140 miles up the coast.

We accordingly had a leisurely breakfast and spent the morning preparing the boat for sea. This can take a little time but is always a nice way of tidying up. On deck, we dismount the wind generator, reconfigure it as a tow generator, and stow away the fan blades and tail. Then we tie the oars to the dinghy, hoist it on board using a halyard, and tie it down to the fore-deck. Fit the jack-stays, if they aren’t already in place, take down and stow the sun shades, ensure that all the safety lines are secure, and clear the cockpit of clutter. Down below, all the washing up needs to be finished so that we can put away the washing-up bowls, and all loose items stowed somewhere where they won’t move in transit (never wholly successful!). All the hatches and stopcocks must be closed, and the correct charts, wet weather gear, life vests and safety harnesses fetched out.

We set off a little after twelve. There was quite a bit of swell coming in through the heads and we didn’t really want to have the sails up going across the bar, so we gunned the motor and took her through. It was a bit bumpy and we left a trail of smoke, which was a bit worrying; it was the second time that I’d seen engine smoke this trip. Put that on the ‘to do’ list.

Once we were clear of the bar, I went out onto the deck to attach the halyard so that we could hoist the main. This is never a pleasant chore at sea, as you get thrown around a lot and everything gets twisted. A few years back we did try attaching the main halyard early so that we could simply haul up the main from the comfort of the cockpit, but it’s a long and feisty steel cable that swings with a lot of momentum, and it really enjoys wrapping itself around everything in sight. If you leave it alone for a moment, it has a particular affinity for the light cluster half way up the forward side of the mast.

Eventually with some co-ordination between deck and cockpit we disentangled it from the light cluster, put up the sails and headed out to the 50 metre line. The 3 metre swells were definitely very much still in evidence, and not very comfortable in the shallows close to shore, but they got less confused in deeper water and we set a course for the NE and gratefully turned control over to Harriet the Hydrovane.

The wind was actually an easterly, so we were close-hauled and getting a fair bit of water over the deck and some in the cockpit. One made it into the galley while I was getting a drink. We put in the second reef and then, when we hit 9 knots (a new Pindimara record!), the third one. The standard Bavaria 34 doesn’t come with a third reef, and we are always very glad that we thought of having one put in. Far from abating, wind speeds were 25-30 knots and showing no signs of changing.

Petrels skimmed the swells around us, and dolphins showed up to say hello and to play in the bow wave. One scene will always remain in my memory. The swells had opened up, as they sometimes do, into a huge bowl-shaped depression with steep-sided waves on all sides. As Pindimara slid down one of the sides into the bowl, we realised that all the other sides were packed with dolphins, dozens of them, all surfing down into the centre with us.

As afternoon turned to evening, the wind and waves remained constant. We were feeling woozy from eating sea-sickness tablets, and very grateful that Harriet could take care of the steering, which would otherwise have been very hard work. Skandia, the maxi racing yacht and oft-times winner of the Sydney to Hobart, passed us by on the port beam. The Cunard liner Queen Victoria passed on the starboard. Apart from that, it just seemed to be us and the dolphins.


SKANDIA PASSES BY

We shook out the third reef at dusk, because the wind had eased to 20 knots and had swung around to the SE. Maybe we were finally going to get our perfect southerly? I grabbed a couple of hours sleep, and was woken by Bronwyn shouting my name from the cockpit. Rushing out onto the deck, I found her looking at a huge bulk carrier of some kind with very odd navigation lights. We couldn’t figure out which way she was heading, but she certainly didn’t seem to be at anchor. I got out the million candlepower searchlight that we keep for these occasions, and shone it first up at our sail, and then at their bridge. After a while she turned away and we realised that she was showing all white lights at the bow and sides, with red and green navigation lights on the stern. Weird, and very disconcerting. It’s customary to have them the other way around.

We were still travelling very fast, a steady 7 knots, and had cleared Seal Rocks with its associated shoals and reefs. Lightning flickered in the sky ahead, and I checked the BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) website on my phone to see if there was anything up there that we should know about. The forecast was still the same; apparently we should be sitting in 15 knots with 1 metre swells, not 25 knots with 3 metre swells. Ah well, it’s not an exact science. We put the third reef back in.

I took a short video of what it’s like to be travelling in Pindimara at those speeds. Note that I had to take the video during a quiet period when I had a hand free to hold the camera.

VIDEO: RUNNING WITH THE WIND (1.2Mb)

Bronwyn was feeling somewhat the worse for wear and retired to the cabin, while I kept watch under the stars. Occasionally we hit 8 knots; not bad at all for a big fat tub, but our actual speed over ground was a knot or two less because by now we were in the East Australian Current which runs down the coast hereabouts. The usual advice is to stick close to shore to avoid it, but we had cut across a bit too far and the swells made it really uncomfortable to go back inland, so we just lived with it.

A large sailing boat came by in the dark. We did some mutual shining-the-spotlight-on-the-sails to make sure that we each understood what the other one was and where we were going. An hour or so later, another one showed up, this time on a collision course from behind. I had right of way, so I didn’t change course but lit up my sails and played my spotlight over their sails until I heard voices. They got closer and closer, and I realised that it was another maxi travelling very quickly indeed with three enormous sails up. I hovered over Harriet, ready to disengage and take evasive action and a little concerned that they hadn’t flashed me a signal back, but figured that they were professional racers and probably knew what they were doing. She passed about twenty metres off to starboard, enormous genoa eclipsing the stars above me, and as she came level and I called out some cheery greeting, I distinctly heard a voice from the cockpit say “What was that? F__k me, it’s a boat!”

The night passed, and the wind finally dropped as Bronwyn came up to take the dawn watch. It was now definitely a southerly and we furled the foresail and ran on reefed main alone. We needed to get closer to shore, but crossing the line of swell was really uncomfortable and neither of us was feeling too great. We agreed to keep on as northerly a heading as we could, because the shore curves around to the north east and we would intersect with it later.

The only entry in the ship’s log between 07:40 and 10:00 is “Sloppy as all hell. Going backwards?”.

By ten o’clock it was clear that at 25 miles offshore we were far too deep into the East Australian Current. We were travelling at 7 knots, but only making 3 over ground. The wind was a reasonable 15 knots and the swell a mere 1 metre of nothing, but the night had taken it’s toll and we plotted a course for Port Macquarie and an overnight anchorage. Under un-reefed main alone we put the now SE swell behind us, which was much more comfortable except for the odd roller that tried to climb up into the sugar scoop.


A FOLLOWING SEA

We didn’t much like the look of the description of the bar at Port Macquarie, and we’d be unlikely to be crossing it in daylight, so we looked for another option. We consulted Lucas, the definitive cruising guide for the NSW coast, and saw that he recommended an anchorage called Camden Haven, which was a bit closer and was described as having lead lights that were ‘obvious from deep water’. Lead lights are land-based markers that, when aligned, point to safe passage through a shoal or reef. As we emerged from the East Australian Current our speed over ground was picking up, and we could arrive well before sundown. We set course for Point Perpendicular beneath Brother Mountain, which was in fact already visible on the horizon, albeit twenty miles away.


A PASSING PETREL

We arrived at the bar with plenty of time to spare before dark, but unfortunately just before low tide, so we hove to and waited for the water to get a bit deeper. While we were waiting, we cruised up and down to see if we could get the lay of the land and locate the lead lights.

Obvious from deep water, my foot! We easily located the causeway on which the markers were built, but even through binoculars it was clear that the area was littered with structures of various shapes and sizes, and completely unclear which of these were the ones that we needed to line up to get our safe passage. We experimented with a few combinations, but they all seemed to either take us through the solid harbour wall or across the obvious breaking shoal. All the structures were the same colour as the background, and all were obscured by the haze of the setting sun. We went back out to sea and waited for sunset, when hopefully the “real” markers would light up blue and show us the way.


THERE’S A GAP HERE SOMEWHERE

Meanwhile we’d been watching the bar itself, which to our dismay was regularly obscured by huge green rollers with foaming caps. Obviously low tide was not a great time to pass.

Two hours past low tide, at half past six in the evening, the setting sun went behind a cloud and we could suddenly see the correct markers, which were in fact none of the ones that we had considered earlier. This was much better than waiting for them to light up and having to navigate the channel in the dark, so we started the engine (which didn’t smoke at all. Maybe it had just been clearing its throat after weeks of inactivity) and lined them up.

We’d noticed that the big rollers were coming in in twos, so we waited for two to explode over the bar and then powered ahead of the next pair. I surfed half the way on the first one, then picked up the second, dropping off the top just shy of the bar itself as the top started to curl. The wave hit the shoal just in front of us, and as it did, a whole pod of dolphins exploded out of it. They’d clearly joined us for the ride, and were going back to catch the next one. I couldn’t stop to play, though, and dropped through and into the channel, powering up to escape the next roller, and then throttling back to nothing as we came to the shallows. We were through.

An evening with Evie

The long-expected Southerly has apparently been delayed until Friday, so on Thursday we motored over to Nelson Bay to pick up a few supplies and to take our new friend Evie out for a sail. We managed to get the furler jammed when stopping for a salmon and wine lunch in Salamander Bay, and one thing led to another and (after suitable repairs) we ended up drinking the boat dry and then heading back into town for more supplies. We vaguely recollect trying to press-gang Evie into coming with us as crew. We vaguely recall that she almost agreed.


BRONWYN AND EVIE (EARLY IN THE EVENING)

Somehow we ended up anchored outside the marina at Nelson Bay, perfectly positioned for an early escape, if the wind comes.

Fame Cove

The guys at the Noakes shipyard were able to fit us in on Monday morning, and since we’re not expecting the southerly that is our ticket out of here until Thursday, it all fits in beautifully with our plans. The holding tank was a quick and simple job. Naturally, as soon as we had Pindimara out on the hoist, it was immediately apparent that a few more things needed doing. Despite the recent antifoul paint job, we had a good inch of coral which had grown while she was sitting still back at Gibson marina, and I suddenly noticed that when the Bayview marina guys had antifouled our hull, they had neglected to paint the saildrive, which was by now down to the bare metal. Not impressed! But needless to say, Noakes sorted it out.

While all this was going on, we had popped into a local bar for a drink. Our new budget certainly doesn’t run to foreign beers, but we allowed ourselves just one premium $10 German beer on the waterfront, and then we’d head to the RSL for a coldie and a schnitzel (non-Australian readers probably should just ignore that. You don’t want to know. Trust me).

But then it magically happened to be Happy Hour, and it would have been rude not to. And then we met Evie, who had a similar story to ours, to whit she had just left her high powered job to run away to sea, and the evening just seemed to get better.

By the time the Noakes boys had fitted the head tank and attended to all the other little tasks, it was time for them to go home and we were nicely sozzled, so we just stayed tied up inside the lifting cradle and spent the night there.


PINDIMARA ON THE LIFTING CRADLE

On the morrow, I was up bright and early and motored out of the marina to find us a new anchorage, while Bronwyn slept on. I tried a few places, but there was quite a bit of swell, and eventually I just dropped the pick in a channel while we had breakfast and decided what to do next. While we chatted, a northerly blew up and our anchor started dragging, so we hauled it up and used the wind to get to Fame Cove, deeper inside the Port Stephens area.

 
FAME COVE AT DAWN AND DUSK

It really is a lovely spot, and we spent a couple of great days working on our schoolwork. Yes, really! I’m sure that my previous university studies would have gone much more smoothly if I’d been able to do them moored in a private little bay in the sun. Be that as it may, I also took the opportunity between swims to refit a few instruments that I have been “repairing” for the last couple of years, one of which was at the top of the mast so I got to try my snazzy new tool belt, which Bronwyn bought me to stop me from dropping my tools over the side.

 
HAVE TOOLBELT, WILL TRAVEL

The only down side to Fame Cove is the incredible number of house-flies. Our boat is full of them! We can’t figure out what they’re after; they ignore any food that’s laying about, they don’t seem to be interested in water. The only common theme is that whenever Bronwyn opens her MacBook, they all swarm over and sit on the screen. Very strange.

I turned on my telephone, and everybody else seems to have remembered that it was my birthday. Which is great, because I had completely forgotten.

A Magical Interlude

I discovered early on in our live-aboard life that while I have the knack of sleeping through all manner of shipboard noises, if the boat once moves in an unusual fashion or there is any untoward sound, I am awake and on deck in a flash.

At three o’clock this morning I awoke standing in the cockpit in mirror-smooth conditions under a crescent moon. The Milky Way hung above in all its glory, the Greater Magellanic Cloud a splash of white high above. All seemed calm and silent and I couldn’t work out why I was there.

Then right at the edge of my hearing I detected faint music, as if somebody was playing a transistor radio muffled under a blanket. I looked around to see if there were any fishermen on the water or perhaps courting couples on the beach, but there was nothing to be seen. The few houses in the vicinity were dark and quiet.

The volume of the music swelled, and I was able to recognise a violin being played impossibly fast, like a fast Irish jig in double time. After another minute or two, although the music was still very faint, I was able to get a fix on the direction. The sound was coming from the uninhabited mangrove swamp bordering the marine sanctuary. I couldn’t make out any lights at all from the swamp, just this crazy fast dance music.

I began to suspect that I was suffering from tinnitus or the remnants of some dream, and then the music got still louder and a dog in one of the darkened houses barked uncertainly a couple of times. A roosting seabird squawked its disapproval.

I began to recall those old folk tales, where an unwary traveller stumbles upon a party of magical faerie folk, joins in and is welcomed and showered with gold, only to find that when he gets back home a hundred years has passed. I thought idly of getting in the tender and rowing over to the mangroves, which were only a couple of hundred metres away, to see if I could get a better look.

Then, from on high, a big fat white shooting star plummeted from the heavens, straight down into the mangroves and directly into the source of the music… which suddenly stopped.

After contemplating the silence for a few more minutes, I went quietly back to bed.

Shooting Star image borrowed from kstp.com

Thinking about the Future

One day, the money will run out.

On the other hand, we’re completely serious about giving up our old careers. It is true that the money was great, and it has allowed us to buy and equip the boat and to purchase enough property to form a nice safety net for the future. The Information Technology industry has been good to us, and for many years we enjoyed the challenges. In recent years, though, as we went from contract to contract we have found that there are no new problems under the sun, and that usually those problems result from the clients making the same old mistakes. We realised that we were just getting frustrated and weren’t learning anything new. Being in a senior position is boring; it was time to find a new career and to start from the bottom again.

Over the three years that we planned this trip, we were also researching a number of different future career options. Among others, we considered running a cafe, running a B&B, studying medicine, teaching English, teaching SCUBA diving, and several more. In the end, we decided that although we would bear all of these options in mind, we would focus our minds on the mining industry.

Our new home, Australia, has some of the best mining opportunities in the world. The commodities market is all that stands between Australia and the worldwide recession. We foresee a boom time for Australian exploration mining, and there is also a lack of people who are willing to go out into the bush and get their hands dirty; the focus in all industries in recent years has been on the world of finance and business rather than doing the hard miles at the sharp end. In the mining industry in particular, people are rejecting the fly in / fly out remote working because it takes them away from their families and friends and cities for extended periods. We are keen to go the other way, to leave our soft office jobs and get out there into the wilderness. Our theory is that although we are older and less experienced than most career geologists, we will be valuable to employers because we are willing to go out there together and therefore won’t be stressed about leaving anybody behind.

This time, too, we’ve chosen two slightly different study paths. This isn’t just down to our differing interests; we’re very aware that for too long we’ve had all our eggs in one very small basket, and it feels good to be diversified. Bronwyn is doing a degree in Surveying Science. and I’m pursuing a post-grad diploma in Mining Geology. It’s good to be using our brains again, and we’re both enjoying our courses immensely.

Geology student at work

Salamander Bay: The morning fish fry


PINDIMARA AT DAWN,
WITH SUNSHADES AND WIND GENERATOR DEPLOYED

There’s no sign of another southerly until the middle of next week, and the guys at Noakes are not free to fit our holding tank until Monday, so we’ve settled down to relax for the remainder of the week.

This is no great hardship, because Salamander Bay is a superb and well-protected anchorage. The neighbouring marine sanctuary is packed with life, and every morning the seabirds put on a great display as the bait fish come to the surface.

I’m usually sitting in the cockpit each morning for an hour or so after dawn, catching up on email or reading a book or just sitting and thinking. Then I hear the first characteristic fizzing sound, and the surface starts to boil in a circle a few metres across as the fish begin to jump. I can only assume that they are trying to avoid some predator fish circling below.

The first gulls arrive; they seem to be able to detect the fizzing from far away. They land inside the circle and try to spear passing fish with their beaks.

Attracted by the commotion, the first terns arrive, wheeling fifteen to twenty metres above and then folding their wings to plummet into the water with a signature ‘splosh’, returning to the surface a moment later with fish grasped firmly in their bills.

 

If the fish stay active for more than a few minutes, then a stately pelican will drift over before landing in an unsightly flurry of wings and water, losing no time in cruising through the centre of the disturbance with enormous beak agape, scooping up fish by the litre.

Then as quickly as it began, the fish boil will stop, and all the birds relax and bob on the surface and wait for the next one.

Pittwater to Port Stephens

It was a working weekday morning. Usually when we’ve been out beyond the heads it’s been a weekend or a public holiday, and so it was a slightly eerie feeling to make it all the way through Pittwater and out to sea without seeing a single other boat.

On the other hand, we had plenty of animal company. We surprised a gannet asleep on the surface with its head under its wing, and sighted some others drifting in formation high above the mast. Petrels skimmed the surface all around, scooping fish from the water, and the occasional pelican soared regally past.

Down in the water, we spotted a good number of my favourite jellyfish. I haven’t been able to find out what they’re called – or even find any reference to them in the literature – but they’re common near Pittwater. They’re a good 20cm or more long, thick and chunky and yellow, and look like something out of Star Trek. Like many jellyfish, they’re also very curious, and will come and bump on the bottom of the boat to see what you are.

A few hours further on, we were joined by a couple of pods of dolphins, who put on a display for Bronwyn as she stood in the pulpit, jostling with each other to see who could dive closest to the bow, and rolling and surfing in the swell. The scars on their backs show that they must occasionally get too close to motor boats, but they obviously enjoy it too much to stop.

The day passed in pleasant conditions. The last time we’d been here, there were more than forty bulk carriers queued up to get into the coal port at Newcastle, but it looks like the backlog has cleared because there were only half a dozen or so waiting now. As the sun set rosily over the coast, the carriers all lit up like small towns, and Bronwyn went below to rest.

Night fell, and we put in a reef and began to take watches. We don’t really keep a rigid watch system on Pindimara. One of us is awake and the other is asleep, and we switch when we’re tired or when something interesting happens that means that we both have to be on deck. For the remainder of the night, we slept turn about for two or three hours at a time.

Usually on a passage we sleep in the sea berths, which are the benches in the main cabin, but we haven’t fitted any lee-cloths yet and so there is always the feeling that you’re going to roll off onto the floor. On one of my off-watches I chose to sleep in the cockpit with the milky way wheeling above. The night was crystal clear, and there were so many stars that the familiar constellations were all but drowned out in the pointillist background. On one off-watch I decided to try sleeping in the fore-peak, which is our usual master cabin when not at sea. We had recently replaced the original hard foam cushions with blocks of latex, beautifully covered by a local sail maker. With the boat corkscrewing from side to side, I found that the latex bounced pleasantly with each swell, and I quickly fell into an easy sleep.

We enjoyed excellent although rather light winds most of the way, never attaining more than three or four knots, along with a couple of hours of intermittent motoring when the wind died completely and we were getting slopped about in the swell. When morning came, we shook out the reef and sailed up to the Port Stephens lighthouse, avoiding the reefs and aiming for the large and easy entrance to Nelson Bay to our north west. It was at this moment that the forecast nor’wester came in, blowing straight out of the heads, and so we took down the sails and motored in. Behind us, the first of the fishing trawlers followed us in with their catch, surrounded by clouds of hungry seagulls.

It was eight in the morning, and we’d been at sea for twenty-four hours. Hardly a world-beating passage, but very enjoyable and a good shakedown.

We popped into the Noakes shipyard to discuss some work that we needed doing, and then went around the corner to Salamander Bay, where we dropped anchor in pleasant surroundings at the edge of a marine reserve.

We’re off, you know

The one thing that we’d been waiting for, a delivery of rock samples for my post-grad geology course, had been lost for a week in some courier black hole. On Monday morning, with our southerly already blowing, they reported that they had tried delivery and failed, so I got them to hold the parcel at their depot. Although we’d sold the ute, we’d hung on to the motorbike for precisely this eventuality and so we took a last four-hour commute across Sydney afternoon traffic to pick it up.

With the bike now abandoned at the marina (enjoy her, Elizabeth!), there only remained the little task of preparing Pindimara for sea.

We hauled the Walker Bay dinghy up onto the fore-deck and tied her down. This is the first time that we’ve tried this without deflating the RIB. The RIB is removable, and in the past we’ve let it down or taken it off to give us more deck space, but the Walker Bay dealers have been more than a little incompetent about replacing our lost pump valve adapter (it’s been over a year now!) and we haven’t been able to source one from the internet, so we don’t want to go to the hassle of trying to borrow one at the other end so that we can pump it up again.
In any case, we’ve designated the Walker Bay to be our inshore “life raft” if things get really nasty, so it’s better if we can leave it inflated. We lashed the oars inside before tying it down, and mounted a knife inside the anchor hatch in case we need to cut the dinghy free in a hurry.

We pulled down our Ampair wind generator and converted it to tow mode, and mounted the Hydrovane rudder (which has been out of the water for antifouling) and sail (which has been stored below while we’ve been on the mooring to minimise UV damage). Finally we mounted the jack stays on either side of the deck, and went around the cabin securing all the bits and pieces so that they wouldn’t fly out and hit us on the head at sea. We were ready to go!

Except for one little thing. We were expecting it to take us 19 hours to get to the next deep-water destination, Port Stephens, and we prefer to do our in-shore and reef navigation in the light. This suggested a mid-morning departure, so we went to bed.

The following morning, we checked the BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) and Tuesday was still forecast light southerlies, changing to northerlies on Wednesday and Thursday. It really was time to go.

Bronwyn cooked up a hearty oatmeal breakfast while I prepared the boat and then, coffees in hand, we motored out of Gibson Marina for the last time.

It was a strange feeling, looking back and watching the familiar shoreline recede into the distance. Almost everything we know, we learned here in Pittwater. Not only did we do our initial ‘Competent Crew’ qualification here, but over the years as we learned to sail our own boat, we have known joy and laughter, sunshine and storms, frustration and anger and even fear. We sat in silent and companionable contemplation as we chugged out towards the heads.

Passing under the Barrenjoey lighthouse, we hoisted the main and the friendly light Southerly took us out to sea. We’re off.

Almost…

It’s been a busy week. We went to our storage unit and threw out a skipload of stuff. The rest of it either went to the boat or into a friend’s basement, which meant that we could shut down our storage account and save hundreds per month. Having completed all of our removals, we sold the ute and used the money to provision the boat. We are ready. Almost.

We had grand plans to set off on Friday 13th, but we were prevented from doing so by a number of problems:
(1) The superstitious horror of our sailing friends.
(2) The tail end of Cyclone Hamish.
(3) While filling the fuel tank, the filler cap broke off and fell off into the sea. Naturally we can’t find a simple replacement, so I’ll have to fit a new through-hull unless we want water in our diesel.
(4) I was expecting some rock samples for my postgrad correspondence course, and they’re currently lost in courier-land, so I have to hang on to the motorbike until I find out where they are, in case I need to go and get them.
(5) All that stuff that we moved to the boat, is still in the cabin and littering the deck, because we haven’t yet figured out where to put it.

 
THERE’S JUNK EVERYWHERE!

On the plus side, we see that (finally!) the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting a whole week of gentle Southerlies starting tomorrow, which is exactly what we’ve been hoping for.

Free! Free! Free!

And now, suddenly, we’re free. We are either retired consultants or suspicious vagrants with no visible means of support, depending on your viewpoint. For ourselves, we just feel amazingly relaxed. We keep smiling at each other and saying things like ‘Are we in such a hurry that we can’t just sit here for another five minutes?’. We’re both feeling and looking younger as our faces relax, and the crunchy neck that has been bothering me for the last ten years has all but evaporated.

Two weeks to go

After four and a half years of preparation, we are now only two weeks away from changing our lives forever.

On the last day of February we will walk out of the office and retire from the IT industry for good. On the first decent wind in March, we will sail away north east from the Pittwater mooring that has been our home for the last six months, and begin our voyage around Australia.

How long will we be sailing? Where will we end up? What will we do when we get back? Will we ever get back? We don’t have answers to any of these questions, although we do have many different ideas and plans for the future. The one thing that we can be sure of, is that we’re going to have a wonderful adventure, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The preparations are all over, and both we and Pindimara are as ready as we’ll ever be. We did have to dismount the Hydrovane rudder a few days ago to remove the three inches of coral growth which had built up in only one month; the little critters seem to love that black plastic! The rudder is now hanging in our storage unit getting successive layers of epoxy undercoat prior to antifouling.

Now it’s just work-work-work to get everything finished up at the office before we retire. In fact we’ve temporarily moved off the boat to a hotel near to work so that we can put in the hours without killing ourselves, as something has happened to Sydney’s traffic and our simple forty-minute commute from the marina has suddenly, in conjunction with the incessant rain, turned into a two-hour nightmare. Still, only two more weeks and we’ll never have to deal with commuters again.

It’s an incredibly liberating feeling. Neither of us have ever worked so hard or so long or so single-mindedly on a single project. Four and a half years of learning and planning, of cutting back and saving, of neglecting all our other myriad interests – even travel! – in order to focus on preparing for this trip and what is to come after. It’s all coming to a head, and we feel giddy with the approaching freedom.

Feel the Power!

Pindimara is a Bavaria 34, a standard European production boat, and her electrical systems were clearly designed to be plugged into shore power for most of the time. She has a huge and effective shore-power charger with 240 volt AC takeoff to run any convenient household appliances that you might care to carry on board, but if you’re cruising (or indeed living on a mooring), then your only recourse is to run the engine, which powers a standard car alternator and regulator, which really is not capable of giving a house battery a decent charge, especially with the saloon lavishly kitted out with power-hungry halogen spotlights.

Fridge

The fridge has completely laughable insulation. It is possible that it might keep the beer cold in northern Europe, but it has no chance at all of coping with either Australian or Pacific conditions. The normal expected insulation thickness for an electric fridge is three inches or more; this one has barely one inch and spent most of its time either sucking power out of our batteries, or shutting down because the voltage has dropped too low.

We had researched adding extra insulation to the existing fridge, and ripping it out and fitting another one, but in the end we bought a portable Engel 40 litre fridge, which is designed to sit on the back of a ute in the outback and to run for only an hour or so every day if left unopened. It can even run as a freezer if you turn up the power.

We’d tested it out for some time on land and, suitably awed (the Engel is a legend in Australia) had moved it aboard to see what it did to the batteries. The food stayed frozen, but we sill had to run the engine at least once a week to recharge them and we weren’t even living aboard yet. We were clearly going to have to upgrade the house system.

Solar Panels

After in-depth research we concluded that what we really needed was a pair of a kind of solar panel known as the Unisolar US42. These were marine grade, reputedly indestructible, the right power rating, and were shade tolerant so that they wouldn’t mind too much that our backstay was running up between them. In addition they were the only panels on the market which exactly fitted onto our shiny new stainless targa frame without any overlap. There seemed to be plenty of them around in chandlers’ catalogues, so we put in an order for them, only to find that they were out of stock. We ordered them from another dealer, who kept us hanging on for weeks before finally admitted that they were on back-order. A third supplier admitted that even though they had them listed in their catalogue and they were one of UniSolar’s most popular lines, they were in fact no longer being made, having been been discontinued in favour of the larger US64. Naturally, the US64 was far too big to fit on our targa.

Bronwyn the e-bay queen went hunting. Eventually she tracked down one display model that had had some rewiring done to it, plus a dusty old one in the back of somebody’s warehouse, and… not one other in, as far as we could tell, the whole wide world. Luckily she was able to secure both of them, and in due course they showed up in torn and tattered packaging. I fired them up one sunny day to check, and they both seemed fine, so I was eager to plumb them into the boats systems.

I knew from my reading that our problems with dim yellow lights and warm fridges were only to be expected, because the car-style alternator and regulator on our Volvo Penta, although perfectly capable of keeping the cranking battery in reasonable condition, is utterly unsuited to the task of properly charging two large deep-cycle house batteries. Standard regulators are only capable of charging a deep-cycle battery to about 80%, which is really only just shy of usefully flat. What we needed was a smart charger, a piece of electronics which continually monitors the batteries and keeps them on trickle charge until they are 100% full, along with some type of long-term power generator to charge them if we didn’t want to keep running the engine and using up precious fuel.

Our solar panels were intended to fit the bill, supplemented by a wind generator at night. Now I had to buy that smart charger. In the end I chose one from Ampair, because they also made my chosen wind generator and because it was one of the few on the market that would simultaneously charge from two sources. It proved enormously difficult to obtain. Not, this time, because they were out of production, but because all the dealers kept sending the wrong, single-input model. I ended up with quite a pile of single-input smart chargers from dealers all over the world before I finally got the one that I wanted.

We were, of course, now in proud possession of a serious stainless steel targa frame over the helm. All we needed was a little piece of canvas to strap to the top to protect us from the sun and rain, and then we could bolt on the solar panels, generators, aerials, and all those other bits and pieces that make a cruising yacht look like a travelling junk yard. We were living in Sydney, with marinas and slipways and workmen all around, so how hard could it be to arrange a bit of marine canvas?

A bit bare on top
A bit bare on top

It was, of course, a nightmare. Most of the telephone numbers that we tried either didn’t pick up, or didn’t return our calls. Those that did pick up, couldn’t fit us in this year, or perhaps any year. Eventually, by dint of haranguing all our nautical friends and neighbours, we did get the number for Shane, who seemed to be the best (or at least, the most reliable) in the business in our locality. Eventually we managed to connect with him, and booked a slot some months ahead. Those months soon flowed by, and he was apparently always too busy with this or that job to attend to us, but it gave me the opportunity to spent quite a bit of time at Aquavolt, an excellent shop where the incomparable Kurt answered every question, solved every problem, and unfailingly sold me the highest-spec equipment that money could buy.

I was deeply concerned about power wastage, and was unhappy to follow the industry standard of a 5% transmission loss. That’s almost 5 of our precious peak power 84 amps thrown away in heating the wires, so I doubled the wire diameter and got the loss down to a theoretical zero. I spent a very windy day lying on top of the fuel tank in the lazarette with a gas-powered soldering iron, running my extraordinarily expensive cables through the bilges and wiring them up to through-hulls. I discovered crawlspaces and cutouts that I never knew we had, and finally patched everything together all the way from the transom to our snazzy smart charger; but still there was no sign of any canvas.

Wired
Wired

We were by now pestering Shane every few days, and one day when we rowed out to the mooring we were delighted to see that Pindimara was sporting a beautiful new canvas roof over the helm, with both US42s mounted sturdily above. I’m a bit picky about the way that I like my electrics to be wired, so we had agreed with Shane that he was to mount the panels but not to wire them in. I got out my tools and climbed up the targa to connect my wiring harness to the panels… and discovered that they had been mounted in such a way that it was impossible to get at the connections. Shane had provided us with some bits of wire hanging down, but they weren’t long enough to reach anywhere useful and anyway I wanted to wire the panels in parallel.

A roof over our heads
A roof over our heads

There followed several days of increasingly frustrating emails and phone calls as I tried to get Shane to tell me the best way of dismounting the securely mounted panels with minimum disruption, while he for some reason stubbornly refused to help. He didn’t seem to think that it was at all odd to leave the panels in an unusable state. Eventually, however, he did give me the information that I needed, and I partially unlaced the canvas and, with the help of Bronwyn’s small hands, managed to finish off the wiring.

I removed the roped-on cardboard shields, and waited in some trepidation as the first rays of sun hit the solar cells. I was suitably impressed. My jury-rigged ammeter twitched and then swept across the dial; each of our panels was generating slightly more than its published rating. Over the next few days we marvelled at how, in conjunction with our smart charger, those two panels kept our batteries topped up and conditioned even with both fridges running. We had solar power!

We discussed ripping out the old Frigiboat fridge and mounting the Engel in its place, but neither of us is excited by woodwork and it seemed like a lot of fuss. In the end, we removed the mattresses from the back cabin and mounted the Engel in there, on a sliding rack so that most of the time it was hidden away on the centre line. This also gave me the opportunity to turn the back cabin into my chandlery/workshop, so I moved in all my tools, spare parts, bits of string, sail bags, and half-completed projects. Suddenly there was a lot more room in the boat’s lockers, and we turned the original fridge into a wine cellar.

Suck up those rays!
Suck up those rays!

Wind Generator

Flushed with success, I unlimbered our Ampair 100 generator, which had up to now been sitting in a box in storage. It’s quite a clever piece of kit, comprising a cast-iron generator body that you can either mount with a windmill blade and hoist in the rigging, or hang from the stern with a propeller on a line which you tow along behind you. Either way, it was supposed to generate oodles of power, and we’d had it shipped from the UK to America to Australia to take advantage of the exchange rates and free trade agreements. It was pretty clear that we were going to need some more stainless work to mount it in tow mode, and I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with any more local fabricators, so I hoisted it up on the foredeck on the spinnaker halyard and started to bolt on the windmill fan.

It wouldn’t fit. I disassembled the fan, and reassembled it backwards, but it still wouldn’t fit. I tried it this way and that, and then got a second opinion, but Bronwyn couldn’t get it to bolt on either. There were two screw holes and two bolts, but they just wouldn’t line up whatever we did. A frustrated email to England resulted in a speedy and glad reply from the manufacturers. “Aha!” they said, “We’ve been looking for that faulty propeller boss.” Apparently they’d had a bad batch from the factory, and knew one had been sent out, but not to whom. They agreed to send a new one, as well as a small box of spare cruising parts as recompense. When the boss arrived, it fit perfectly first time, so I plugged in the generator and hoisted into the fore-triangle. Naturally, we didn’t get any wind all week.

A zero-amp wind
A zero-amp wind

Then, finally, at the beginning of the weekend, a southerly storm came in and it really began to blow. We watched in delight as our ammeter climbed to 5 amps, and couldn’t resist snatching the occasional look through the forward hatch to make sure that it was still spinning. It was remarkably quiet; almost silent, in fact, over the sound of the wind, and didn’t bother us at all even though it was mounted only a couple of metres above our forepeak cabin. Then, a few hours into the night, the storm really started to fire up, and I was awoken by the tortured howl of a turbine generator. I leaped out of bed and ran up on deck, only to be confronted by the Ampair blurring calmly and silently in the moonlight; all the noise was coming from a generator on another boat some thirty metres away.

Batteries

I’d taken the opportunity to replace our six-year old 180 AmpHour deep cycle batteries with some smaller, more modern ones, and it turned out that I could fit three 225 AmpHour Trojans into the same physical space. With the new batteries, the solar panels by day, and the wind generator by day and by night, we found ourselves for the first time having the luxury of almost unlimited electrical power without ever running the engine. Not only did we have constant and reliable refrigeration, but we no longer found ourselves having to go to bed because the lights were dimming. I shelved all my plans to replace our cabins halogen lights with low-consumption LEDs, which was something of a relief because our experiments had shown us that the technology was not yet really mature. The ones that I’d fitted were uncomfortably white and although they were bright enough directly underneath, their cone of action was annoyingly narrow.

Living aboard again

While all this had been going on, we had moved permanently on board, reckoning that this would be the best way of making sure that the boat was properly prepared for the upcoming voyage. We moved most of our stuff into storage, and a lot of it on board… and much of it off again… and then quite a bit back on… continually tuning and adjusting until we had everything the way that we wanted it. We were pleasantly surprised by how much room there was to store everything, although we did notice that the waterline was now two inches lower than when we’d bought her.

Clutter
Clutter

Beating the boundaries

We’re about to head off on a sailing adventure, so we popped down to our Tasmanian property to ensure that we’d still be able to locate the boundaries on our return. We’ve replaced our original surveyor’s marks with fresh tape and put in some boundary stakes.

We also decided on the location of our house, which we intend to be built on a high deck to provide views out over the tree tops. We’re currently considering a round yurt design, so we’ve staked out a ring.

Staking out the foundations.
Staking out the foundations.

While buying stakes and marking tape at the local garden centre, we decided that we might as well do some gardening as well, so we planted some soft fruit.

Really, though, the whole idea is to camp out here in complete seclusion, and enjoy the forest.

Breakfast time
Breakfast time

Sea trials and the Sydney to Hobart

While messing around on the mooring and rowing back and forth, we had come to know a bunch of guys who worked at the nearby Bayview Slipway. They seemed to be nice people and we’d seen a lot of their work, so we booked Pindimara in for an antifoul, a safety check, a rig check, and a fancy new Kiwiprop feathering propeller. Mark and the lads did a good job of that, so we booked them again to put in our self steering system, which had finally arrived from England where it had been on order at the Hydrovane factory. The job of fitting it was physically simple but the unit was very heavy and clumsy to move around, so we thought that we’d let the professionals figure out where to drill the holes. At the same time, we asked them to fabricate a mounting for the tow generator, and they decided to move us to a marina berth so that they could get better access.

We took advantage of the easy access and mains power to finish up all those little jobs that needed doing; installing a fan in the saloon, fixing a dodgy burner on the stove, installing an LED spotlight in the galley, cleaning the coral off the log sender, and replacing the old sponge mattresses in the forepeak with custom-made latex.

A couple of weeks and quite a few thousand dollars later, all the mounts were in place and I fitted the actual Hydrovane unit, which looked quite spectacular and got a lot of admiring looks from passersby.

A bit of a looker
A bit of a looker

It was the christmas holiday season and the annual Sydney to Hobart sailing race was about to start, so we killed two birds with one stone by doing sea trials in the direction of Sydney heads on the day of the race.

Tow Generator

There wasn’t any wind on the way down, so we had to motor for most of the way, which meant that we couldn’t test out the Hydrovane self steering or indeed our new rigging. However, there was nothing to stop us from running the tow generator, so when we got into deep enough water I rather carefully tied the twenty or so metres of line to the heavy propeller (a fisherman’s bend at both ends, whipped, it said in the instructions) and with some trepidation plonked it overboard. Its a really heavy unit and the Ampair instruction manual is full of dire warnings about porpoising propellers and twisted lines, but in the event the whole system was very calm and gentle and quietly got about the business of making electricity.

Not as scary as I expected
Not as scary as I expected

Hydrovane self-steering

A few hours later we were approaching Sydney heads, and a bit of a breeze sprang up so we put up the sails and stuck our nose in to see what was happening. The race proper starts from the harbour, which isn’t really visible from the heads, and we didn’t want to go all the way in because we knew that it would be crazily crowded. Even out here, there was a fair bit of activity, and a great many yellow buoys that seemed to be race-related. We hove to and fired up the internet to see what it had to say on the race site. Apparently there was a no-sail zone anywhere inside the harbour, and a no-go zone inside the buoys, and a no-wake zone during the start, which was not due for another few hours. We decided that since the wind was now nice and steady, we’d sail out to sea and test out our gear, and then heave to just outside the heads and watch the race boats come out.

The Hydrovane wind-vane self-steering was a dream. It took us perhaps fifteen minutes to understand what it was trying to do, and then we were in love. The unit consists of a bright red sail sticking up at the stern, connected by a simple and very strong gearbox to its own rudder, completely separate from all the boat’s own systems. In use, you first get the yacht’s own sails and rudder set the way you want them, so that the boat is moving sweetly through the water in the direction that you want to go. Then you lock the steering and forget about it. Now you align the Hydrovane’s sail with the yacht’s, and put it into gear by pulling a simple knob. From now on, whenever the wind shifts, the Hydrovane sail flops to one side and its rudder automatically compensates to bring the yacht back on track. This means that far from following a set course, it follows the wind through every gust and lull, ensuring that the sails remain correctly set for your chosen angle of sail. There is some minor tuning that you can do, but basically it just does the job without attention, powered entirely by the wind.

What this means is that when you are alone on watch, the boat can steer itself, freeing you up to do other things on deck, and releasing you from the very tiring task of continually watching the wind and steering into the gusts and out of the lulls, or continually losing power as you steer up and down the swells.

We were very impressed.

Look, ma, no hands!
Look, ma, no hands!

We were also impressed by our sail rig. We’d had all new halyards made up, and had asked the rigger (Mario Ruel at Bayview Slipway; he’s brilliant) to change our single-line reefing, which originally controlled the first and second reefs, to now control the second and our newly installed third reef. We had found that we never bothered with the first reef anyway, going straight to the second when it gets windy, and if we really need it one day then its pretty easy to tie it down manually as its not far from the deck. In addition to this, we were using our new cruising jib foresail for the first time in anger, and it was everything that the sailmaker (John Herrick in Nelson Bay; he’s brilliant too) had promised. The Bavaria originally came equipped with a huge genoa which was just far too overpowered and gave us stacks of weather helm (which makes a boat hard work to steer). This new little jib kept the boat beautifully balanced so that you could steer with one finger, and because it had a nice high clew we could see under it as well.

Very chuffed with ourselves, we sailed back to Sydney heads and hove to to wait for the start of the race.

The Sydney to Hobart

All was quiet and serene. The sea was calm and smooth, with only just enough wind to keep the few yachts hove to. A square-rigger drifted gently back and forth, packed to the scuppers with tourists.

Rather impressive grockle boat
Rather impressive grockle boat

We couldn’t see around the corner into the main harbour, but the start time was approaching and we could hear the radio chatter as the race boats jockeyed for their start positions, and a foreign freighter captain berating a pleasure boat in his path. There was a period of radio silence and then a quick countdown. Then, for quite a few minutes, nothing.

All quiet on the western front
All quiet on the western front

All of a sudden, the sky was full of helicopters. Then, seconds later, the whole bay erupted with hundreds of power boats going full bore. It was complete chaos; boats were screaming out in every direction, heavily overloaded with families and friends and beer and cameras. The calm sea was instantly transformed into several metres of criss-crossing swell. Water sprayed over the deck and into the cockpit as an enormous Sunseeker swamped us in its wake.

Uh-oh. Here comes a big one
Uh-oh. Here comes a big one

What happened to our nice quiet harbour?
What happened to our nice quiet harbour?

We held on to strong points and looked in vain for the race boats, and then suddenly there they were, hugging the southerly head and shaking out their spinnakers. They were almost invisible in a churning mass of power boats, tinnies, fishing boats, pleasure yachts, and even kayaks. With the spectators all around and helicopters buzzing at the mast head, it was a wonder that they could find any wind at all, let alone jockey for position around the final buoy.

Sail ho!
Sail ho!

Skandia and Wild Oats duke it out
Skandia and Wild Oats duke it out

Er. Boys. Theres a big yacht here in front of you. Boys?
Er. Boys. Theres a big yacht here in front of you. Boys?

It was mad, it was crazy, it was wonderful, and we’d never seen anything remotely like it. And then, as quickly as they’d come, they were gone; racers, newshounds and hangers-on, all had disappeared over the horizon toward Hobart. Bemused and happy after a successful and unexpectedly exciting day, we pointed Pindimara in the opposite direction and headed for home.

All aboard for the Hobart Express
All aboard for the Hobart Express

Where’s the money?

Cruising is a commitment that goes far beyond taking a sabbatical from work. Since setting out on this path, our lives have changed quite dramatically. At base, we are talking about giving up our jobs, selling or renting out our home, selling or storing all of our posessions, and heading out to sea with no visible means of support.

In the meantime, we found that all other hobbies and interests had to take a back seat. When we weren’t actively sailing or working on the boat, then we were reading about boats or researching techniques or equipment. Free time became compressed, and ever more precious. We began to wonder if we were becoming sailing bores, and tried to deliberately refrain from talking about it in company.

Our first plan had been to circumnavigate the globe, but after a while we thought that this might be a little ambitious for a couple of complete beginners, so we decided to take it slowly and stick to our own back yard. The trade winds and the cyclone season pretty much determined our start and end points, so it was clear that we would be setting off from Australia in a February and returning in a November. All we had to do was to choose the year, so we had chosen a date three years in the future to give ourselves time to prepare. That date was now fast approaching.

We also had to completely rethink the way that we lived. There is a common stereotype in the cruising world; the guy building a yacht in his back yard while his wife shakes her head and occasionally calls him in for dinner. There is a reason why those yachts almost never go to sea; outfitting a cruising yacht is not a part-time activity, and unless you’re planning to go single-handed, both partners must be 100% involved.

Money was obviously much on our minds. We were both children of the easy credit era, and, like everybody else of our generation, grew up thinking nothing of racking up huge credit card bills and loans, as long as we could manage the monthly repayments. In common with most other people, our financial planning involved redistributing debt across different providers, taking advantage of interest-free periods and repayment holidays, always chasing the holy grail where monthly outgoings exactly matched monthly income.

We started to think about compound interest and did the math. We were flabbergasted at just how much money we were spending in interest payments; usually two or three hundred percent of the original loan amount. Mortgages, because of their extended time line, were particularly crazy. We realised that if we were going to save anything for our retirement, let alone go cruising, then we had first to get rid of all that debt so that we could make compound interest work for us, rather than against.

We started to juggle in earnest. We took out short-term flexible loans in order to pay off our long-term loans. We tightened our belts, reduced our evenings out to once a week instead of every night, and used the savings to make regular lump sum payments on all our loans, far over and above the minimum repayments. We built spreadsheets and set milestones, and celebrated (cheaply) as we hit each one.

When we originally started to talk about our adventure, we were living inland, three hours from the nearest anchorage. Once we bought Pindimara, she was moored over four hours away. This was barely practical for weekend sailing, and impossible if we wanted to do any work on her, so we moved jobs and cities to be closer.

As the years went by, we moved out of our expensive rented waterfront accommodation and purchased a cheaper flat in a depressed area (with a good future, though. We’re confident that that investment will pay off in a few years); we sold the car (who needs a car in the city? And its amazing how much sailing gear you can carry on a motorcycle); tore up most of our credit cards (keeping only the fee-free ones that we’ll need for cruising); and finally succeeded in paying off much of our debt.

We were, however, still continually nipping off for a quick holiday or popping down to the restaurant on the plastic. Most of that stopped in year three. We wouldn’t be earning any more money while at sea, so every cent that had to go in debt repayment, was a cent out of our cruising budget.

At the beginning of the third and final year of preparation, we drew up a list of our assets and remaining debt, and a short list of things that we still needed to buy. Not surprisingly, this included all the larger ticket items that we had been saving up for; among other things, the water maker, the HF radio, generator, solar panels, lifeboat, cruising chute. There was something of a gap between the amount of money that we had available, and the amount that we needed. In order to make up the shortfall, we trimmed things down even more. We put our expensive (monthly loan repayment) vehicles up for sale, and bought an old truck for cash. We sold or stored a load of our possessions, rented out the flat, and moved full time to the boat.

We buy a Ute

We just bought ourselves a ute. The ute is the archetypal Australian vehicle if ever there was one. Real Aussies drive utes. While it is true that you can buy a flat-bed pickup in other countries, I doubt that anywhere outside of Australia can you equip your farm vehicle with alloy racing wheels, metallic fliptone paint jobs, lowered suspension, superchargers and turbos, or fully race-spec V8 engines. Holden (GM) and Ford even sell them fully tricked up from new, and ute racing is an enormous part of the racing calendar.

Holden Maloo
Holden Maloo

Some people like to add lots of lights, aerials and unfeasibly large bullbars (known here as roo-bars).

Ford ute with 'tray back' and, er, country bits
Ford ute with ‘tray back’ and, er, country bits

Ours doesn’t look like that, though. Ours is a twenty year old Toyota that has spent its entire life chugging around on a rural property, carrying water from the dam to the farmhouse. In this way, it has somehow clocked up an astonishing half a million kilometres, and accumulated an interesting selection of minor dents, some of which have been repaired with household gloss paint.

Toyota Hilux Twin-Cab
Toyota Hilux Twin-Cab

The windows were described by the vendor as ‘manual’, in that to open and close them you put your hand against the glass and push. The radio doesn/t work very well, but it really doesn’t matter because you’d be most unlikely to hear it over the transmission whine anyway. Still, its just what we need to ferry heavy bits and pieces to and from the boat. So why mention it here? Well, I just wanted to say that it is such a pleasure to have a car that you actually have to drive, rather than allowing a bunch of electronics do it all for you. You point the bonnet in the direction that you want it to go, put it into gear, and press the accelerator. If you want to drive with the lights on, then you switch them on. When it rains, you can decide when your windscreen wipers come on, and how fast they move. If you come to a hill, you can change down, or not, depending on your mood. When you need to stop, then it is up to you to decide how hard to push the brake pedal in order to stop without locking the wheels up. If you want to turn a tight corner, then you have to use upper body strength to move the steering wheel around.

It is absolutely brilliant. Bronwyn and I fight over whose turn it is to drive.

We bought a forest

Relaxing here in a clearing, sipping world-class local wine as the sun sets over the blue sea below, I find it hard to believe our luck. We have just bought the forest that stretches for acres all around, but if we need some milk in the morning, we can drive down to the local town in fifteen minutes or, if the mood takes us, we can be at the international airport within the hour.

Indulging in a little light gardening
Indulging in a little light gardening

Our little piece of paradise is in Tasmania, a state that remains largely neglected by tourists and by mainland Australians alike, and yet the lush 68,000 square kilometre island contains some of the most productive land in the southern hemisphere. While the rest of Australia suffers under fifty years of drought, Tasmania not only supplies much of the country’s soft fruit, but also supports a burgeoning and very successful boutique wine industry.

The state largely escaped the Australian property boom and subsequent crash of 2002, and, compared to the rest of the country, land in Tasmania remains cheap and undeveloped. It is true that in recent years, the part of the island closest to the cosmopolitan buzz of mainland Melbourne has undergone something of a metamorphosis, with affluent mainlanders buying up waterside frontage, or giving up their office jobs to start boutique vineyard farm-stays. Later entrepreneurs have since spread out along the coast, with locals scrambling to subdivide and to sell them their previously worthless land.

It is away from these northern areas that today’s bargains are to be found. A year ago, there was still land available on the hills above the capital city of Hobart. Today you should point your car southward, and in only half an hour you will find yourself in the Huon Valley wine region, currently densely thicketed with ‘For Sale’ signs. The larger tracts have been given over to viticulture, but what remains are little pockets of bush, perhaps hard-won fifty years ago, but now often willed to disinterested children who really just want to sell up, split the money, and get back to the city.

Logging is a part of life here, and apart from some rather spectacular National Reserves, there is little standing timber over fifty years old. A typical ‘bush lot’ comprises up to twenty acres of  young gum trees for up to $100,000, a price that could also get you a mere handful of acres of cleared building land with water views. Having done most of our research on Tasmanian Private Realty‘s excellent website, we only needed a single weekend to view our shortlist before settling on fourteen acres sloping gently down towards the sea.

Cygnet is the closest town. It is typical of the area in that it comprises a simple line of a few homes, some local businesses, and three pubs. When we spoke to the new owners of the Top Pub where we were staying, we found that they were renovating the upstairs into a boutique hotel. The nearby Red Velvet Lounge restaurant offered a gourmet menu featuring locally farmed salmon and organic produce, and there was talk of a new deep-water marina close by. These are not the hallmarks of your average bush town, and so it seemed to us that now was the time to buy.

We intend to build a small home in a clearing, but could equally well put up a series of guest lodges. That’s all in the future, though. For the moment, we are content to sit and sip our wine and enjoy the views.

The jetty to our mooring
The jetty to our mooring

Night Watch

We watched the weather carefully, and the very next northerly that came through saw us skipping work and taking the train up to Port Stephens. The conditions were predicted to hold from Friday evening until Saturday lunchtime, so we thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to make our first ever night-time passage. Our newly refurbished sails set us zipping along into the evening at almost seven knots. As we cleared the heads and got into the open sea, a humpback whale breached in front of us, which had to be a good omen.

Several tonnes of frisky whale
Several tonnes of frisky whale

Since there were only two of us aboard, we had to maintain a night watch, manning the helm in shifts. After some discussion, we had chosen an evening of two-hour shifts, followed by a night of three-hour shifts.

We had very different expectations of the night ahead. I was a night shift worker for many years, and was used to having a zonked body clock and coping with the circadian plunge at 3:00am. I had hiked, climbed, and camped extensively at night, and was familiar with the trick of seeing by starlight. Bronwyn, on the other hand, was a bit of a city kid and found the darkness unsettling.

We were both awake for the first couple of watches, during which we checked the boat over and made and ate dinner. As darkness fell, we realised that there was no light in the compass binnacle, but we had a torch to check it with and in any case we could read the heading off the GPS repeater.

At 22:00 I went to sleep in the forepeak while Bronwyn took the first three-hour watch. It was a fine, clear night and the wind was warm and steady and coming from behind us; perfect cruising conditions. Bronwyn started to relax, and when it came to 01:00 she decided to let me sleep for an extra hour. At about this point we were passing the queue of bulk carriers waiting to load coal at Newcastle. There were about forty of them strung out along the 50 metre line, all showing bright white lights.

More tired that she realised, Bronwyn started to get confused about which lights were houses on the shore, and which were large ships. I was woken by the sound of sails flapping, and came up on deck to see Bronwyn peering into the dark compass rose and muttering about the wind changing. In fact she had got disoriented by the ship lights and had got us turned around 180 degrees. There was no harm done, and I took the helm as she went gratefully to bed. It all showed just how easy it is to make mistakes when you are tired.

It was 02:00. We got past the big ships, and the sea became quiet and dark. I fitted a boom preventer and sat and waited for the evil 03:00, the time when the bodys circadian rhythm hits absolute bottom. It was at about this time that I realised that our new stainless frame was causing a problem. One of the supporting struts had been mounted aft and outboard of the stern light, and was casting a reflection of it back into the cockpit. The actual amount of light coming off the one-inch steel tube must have been tiny, but in the deep darkness of the night it was more than enough to completely ruin my night vision. I tried wrapping a rope around the tube, but even the light reflected from the dull matt fibres was too bright. In the end, I found that the only tenable position from which to steer was over to the starboard side with my back to the stern light, which wasn’t hugely comfortable. The stern light would have to be moved.

Distant lighthouses came and went on the shore as we ploughed our lonely furrow. The moon came up behind us in a beautiful red glow, and the first fingerings of dawn touched the eastern skies. I made an entry in the log, woke a restored and cheerful Bronwyn for her shift, and lay down on one of the sea berths. This was also a first, as until now I had only ever slept in the fore or aft cabins, but I found that from the berth I could see out to the helm, and Bronwyn could see in, which was comforting for both of us. I closed my eyes and in moments was fast asleep.

At 08:00 I got up to a day of glorious sunshine. Bronwyn had taken us almost to Broken Bay, and as we made the final course adjustment to take us through the heads and into Pittwater, a pod of dolphins played briefly in our bow wave. We grinned and waved at them. We were home.

Steeling Up

It was time to spend some big bucks, and to get a stainless steel frame made for the stern. This would carry a sunshade for the helmsman, provide extra security around the cockpit, and serve as a mounting place for our solar and wind generators.

After getting a number of quotes, it was quite clear that getting work done in Sydney was far more expensive that getting it done further up the coast, so we decided to shift our base of operations up to Port Stephens, about seventy miles to the north east.

Chris and Nicky were keen to do some offshore sailing, so we invited them along for the trip.

A quiet night in
A quiet night in

After a quiet night on the mooring, we got up sometime before dawn, waved goodbye to Gibson Marina for the last time, and motored out to the heads. We had only been going for about half an hour when the engine overheat alarm went off. I quickly shut down and we drifted under the stars while I searched inside the engine bay for any sign of a problem. However, everything looked just fine, and the engine restarted with no problems at all, so I could only surmise that a plastic bag had temporarily wrapped itself around the cooling intake.

Where the jumblies live
Where the jumblies live

Dawn came as we cleared the headlands, bringing with it a light wind that spun gently around the compass for a couple of hours, before firming up into the promised 10 knot easterly, punctuated by 25 knot squalls that each merited a reef in the mainsail. We tried to reef the foresail, too, but it wasn’t terribly effective when partially furled so we just left it flying. Apart from the odd drop of rain and some mal-de-mer, it was a beautiful trip, very different from our previous attempt. We headed out on a broad reach until we reached a depth of 40 metres, passing lines of empty coal carriers queuing up to enter Newcastle.

Bulk carriers and a reef
Bulk carriers and a reef

In sight of Moon Islet we dropped the sails and motored across the bar. Last time we’d hit bottom, but on this occasion we followed the lead lights religiously and got through with 0.6m under the keel. Rather than go through the bridge and up into Lake Macquarie, we just hooked up to a courtesy buoy, as we were planning to leave early the next day. The engine hadn’t caused us any further grief. I had intended to dive down and have a look at the intakes, but there was a strong tidal rip and I didn’t want to risk it in the gathering dusk. We judged that the same currents were also too strong for our rapidly deteriorating Zodiac, so instead of rowing over to a nearby pub, Bronwyn knocked up a meal from things that she found in the lockers. As usual, it was excellent.

During the night there was a heavy squall, and the boat got caught up in the battle between the tide and the wind. I got up several times to try to prevent the courtesy buoy from banging on the hull, and on one occasion I noticed rainwater pouring in through the ceiling of our forecabin, running down the bulkhead and disappearing into the bilges. Finally, then, I had tracked down the source of all that mysterious fresh water that kept accumulating in the bow.

The tide finally turned at 01:00, and I dropped off into blissful sleep as the boat quietly settled down. Of course, I was up again at 04:00, motoring back down the channel in the dark. We cleared the bar, only to find that the horizon was lit end to end with the lights of dozens of bulk carriers, all anchored along the 50 metre line. It looked like an entire city out there. As we headed towards them, the sun came up to reveal patchy blue skies with flocks of little white cumulus marching out the south east, and small squalls mooching about beneath.

Uh oh. Whats going on up there?
Uh oh. Whats going on up there?

Our plan was to head out past the anchored ships to the 100 metre line and then aim straight across the enormous width of Stockton Bight toward Port Stephens, because the inshore waters had a bad reputation and in any case have never been adequately charted. However, just as we reached a depth of 40 metres, one of the squalls came our way, so we turned to run before it, and once it had passed we were right in amongst the ships.

 Hah! Call this rain? We English laugh at this light drizzle
Hah! Call this rain? We English laugh at this light drizzle

This turned out to be an interesting detour. Most of the ships seemed to be, as far as we could tell, either Japanese or Korean, although most were registered in Panama. There was a lot of foreign language chatter on Channel 16, and many of them seemed to be undergoing repairs; at least, there was a lot of angle-grinding going on.

We picked up a passenger
We picked up a passenger

The wind came and went as we zigzagged between the enormous walls of rusty steel. The bottom readings were very strange; at one point the depth jumped from 48 metres to 4.1 in less than a second. I put the helm over hard, and we didn’t hit anything. Because of the flaky nature of the charting, we couldn’t tell if we’d encountered the mother of all sea mounts or an inquisitive great white shark, but Bronwyn quickly plotted us a direct-line course to Port Stephens, which was still over the horizon, and we got the hell out.

A life on the ocean wave
A life on the ocean wave

The weather turned beautiful, and we got up to our maximum speed of five knots. A pod of dolphins showed up to play in our bow wave, and surface-skimming petrels, groups of yellow-headed gannets, and long-necked divers congregated all around. Our charting proved to be on the nail when land appeared on the horizon, and we dropped sails to motor across the entrance of the bay, which turned out to be shallow but with no real bar. Willing hands took our mooring lines as we backed into an easy berth at The Anchorage, where we headed for the excellent Merretts restaurant for a well-earned restorative. We had arrived.

Antifouling

Our next task was to get her out of the water for her annual antifouling. Last year, we hauled her out with a cradle, which meant that there was quite a large area that remained unpainted because it was under the sling and we couldn’t get at it. This year, we went to the excellent Noakes Boatyard in Nelson Bay, who took her out with a crane and plunked her down on four little pads, so that we could get at almost the whole hull.

Motoring up to the cradle
Motoring up to the cradle

Up she goes!
Up she goes!

One thing that was patently obvious was that although last years expensive hull paint had done a fine job, the cheap stuff that wed used on the sail drive and propeller had definitely been a false economy. This time, we would use better stuff. We also needed to add an extra couple of inches to the waterline to account for all the extra stores she now carried aboard.

Portable coral reef
Portable coral reef

All manner of growth
All manner of growth

Before
Before

After
After

Looks much better now, eh?
Looks much better now, eh?

Chuffed!
Chuffed!

The nice guys at Noakes also gave her a thorough polishing and fixed some gashes in the fibre glass that were the legacy of a lee wind on an old wooden pontoon at Lake Macquarie, and, after some detective work with a high-pressure hose, we located and taped up the defect in the deck that was the source of our freshwater leak.

Sail Maintenance

We invited John Herrick, a local sailmaker, to come and check our sails. He professed them baggy but repairable, and also agreed to add a third reefing point, as well as to make us a new small, strong cruising genoa and a storm trysail. Later on, as we let down the mainsail, we discovered (courtesy of a bloody finger for Bronwyn) that all the battens were fractured, as well as a few of the sliders; maintenance was well overdue.

Ouch!
Ouch!

I loaded both sails onto the back of the motorbike, and then contrived a tube so that I could also take the 3 metre battens, stayed with guy wires to stop them whipping around too badly. It was an interesting ride into town, avoiding overhanging trees, and, in downtown Nelson Bay, a 3 metre clearance footbridge which meant that I had to slalom the bike to get safely through. However, I got to Johns workshop without any problems, and left them with him while we rode back to Sydney.

Wrestling with the main
Wrestling with the main

How to fit a complete suit of sails onto a motorcycle
A complete set of sails on a motorcycle

Interlude

Then came the cyclone, which destroyed a whole marina in Lake Macquarie, damaged yachts up and down the seaboard, and even tore up one of the bulk carriers and drove her onto the beach at Newcastle. The roads were closed to traffic due to flooding, so we couldn’t even get up there to check if Pindimara was OK, and it was several nervous weeks later before we saw her again.

Bouncing around on her mooring, she had scraped some of the antifouling off near the bow, but apart from that she had sustained no damage at all, and as a bonus there wasn’t a drop of water in the forward bilge.

The poor old Zodiac, however, which was our sole method of access to our boat, was getting more and more battered with every use. The supposedly indestructible, lifetime guarantee rowlocks broke again, so I threw them away and poked the oars through the carry straps instead. This made everything a bit slower and less efficient, but at least I didn’t keep falling backwards when the rowlocks snapped or jumped out. Then the spring lock broke on one of the paddle blades. I taped it back on, but then the floor came away so that I had to row with gallons of water aboard. The whole thing was by now in such a bad state that I was just leaving it rolled up behind the bins, trusting that nobody would bother to steal it.

It was definitely time to buy a new tender, but we couldn’t really afford it, and even if we’d bought one, there was nowhere at The Anchorage to store it. We decided to move to a marina that provided a free taxi service. Soldiers Point Marina had a spare mooring, and a little metal speedboat that they used as a tender. They were also the home base of Bluewater Stainless, who we had chosen to do our steelwork. It seemed like an ideal choice, so we said goodbye to the fine people (and fine dining!) at The Anchorage, and set off around the bay.

On the way, we picked up our refurbished sails. What an incredible difference! As well as repairing and strengthening the seams and replacing the battens, John had taken out all the bagginess in the sails, restoring the balance of the boat to as new. We had been fighting the weather helm for so long that we’d forgotten that it used to be any different; now we could sail close-hauled with but a single finger on the wheel. Pindimara was reborn.

Fantastic!
Fantastic!

Soldiers Point

Once installed on a swing mooring at Soldiers Point Marina, we had to wait for the guys at Bluewater Stainless to fit us in to their schedule. The weather was conspiring against any marina work, so they were concentrating on other projects. The months wore on. One weekend, I rode up from Sydney to check that she was OK and to do some minor maintenance. I hopped into the marina’s tender for the quick trip over to the boat, and sat back and chatted about the weather as we motored out to the swing moorings. The tender lacked fenders, being a simple aluminium dinghy with a steel scaffold pole welded around the bow, but this didn’t matter much because Pindimara’s sugar scoop stern entry is protected by a full-width rubber bumper. There was a bit of chop, so the helmsman announced that he was going to tuck under the side rather than head straight for the stern. I often do this myself. When the yacht is streaming off a buoy, it can be worthwhile to come up in the lee of our big fat beam and hand-over-hand around the corner to the stern entry, rather than try to crab sideways into the wind and current for a direct approach.

We were powering up to the port side, and as I waited for the turn alongside so that I could catch hold, I admired the fantastic job that Noakes had done with buffing and polishing the fibre glass. Pindimara looked like a million dollars. At the last second, the helm said something like “Can you fend off?” and then t-boned her amidships. I had reflexively jumped onto the bow and did get one hand to the toe rail, but I was pushing against the thrust of the outboard motor and all that I really achieved was to get a grandstand view as the scaffold pipe punched a hole straight through the fibre glass with an awful crunch. We bounced and hit twice more until the helm finally got the outboard into neutral, leaving me staring in disbelief at the palm-sized hole and long black streaks down our pristine hull.

I was not best pleased. The pole had gone in across the junction of our blue and white gel coats, meaning that two separate repairs were required on the same hole, one for each colour. Incredibly, the marina were very slow to admit responsibility, and it took a lot of arguing before they finally agreed to get it repaired. Then they said that for insurance reasons they would have to withdraw the tender service to our boat, which left me with a bad taste and us stranded without transport again. Nevertheless, we didn’t want to leave for another marina until the fibre glass had been repaired, and in any case we didn’t want to miss out if Bluewater suddenly got a chance to do our steelwork.

I unrolled the Zodiac again from its resting place on the hatch cover. Although the main structure was failing fast, at least my puncture repairs had held up for all this time. I reckoned that it could survive a few more trips, and, once back on shore, I tucked it rolled up under a pile of scrap in the shipyard. Hopefully we would be gone in a couple of weeks.

Another month passed without any action. Then, finally, our yacht was moved into the work berth, and Bluewater made a start. They disassembled our safety lines and stern rails, and made some progress making up frames in their workshop. However, the weather was not cooperating with actually fitting the steelwork to the hull. Because of the configuration of their berth, they had to ensure that they were not welding in a westerly, because that would blow the sparks onto craft in the surrounding marina. Naturally enough, we had weeks and weeks of alternating westerlies, storms, and rain. More weeks passed, with no progress that we could see apart from some holes in the stern that precluded any sailing, and the four-hour commute at weekends to sit on a stationary, half-disassembled boat started to get a bit tiring. At last, some six months after we first arrived, the weather started to cooperate and it all came together. The hull was patched up, and our new stainless went on.

Rather than just build and fit our targa top, the guys at Bluewater had pulled out all the stops and provided us with complete solid side rails all the way along the cockpit, and even some gates on either side. It looked absolutely spectacular.

All it needs is a bit of canvas
All it needs is a bit of canvas

It was at about this time that we began to get suspicious about the amounts that the marina were debiting from our credit card for our mooring. The numbers didn’t match up with what we had originally been quoted, and, after an uphill struggle to obtain a copy of the invoices, we found they had also charged both us and Bluewater for the time that we’d spent on the work berth. It was pretty clear to us that this was their way of raking back the costs of our hull repairs. We had intended to use a third local company to make the canvas for our targa, but when we found that they wouldn’t be able to start work for another six weeks, we decided that it was time to leave for friendlier waters.

Going Coastal

New Year: Pittwater to Swansea Bridge

Apart from the occasional fair-weather foray outside of the heads, we had still yet to sail upon the open sea. The main reason for this was that we had decided not to go until we had an absolute minimum of quite expensive cruising safety equipment. I had made up a couple of wall-posters with lists of equipment and prices, and, crayon in hand, juggled them almost daily, rethinking and prioritising them within our monthly budget.

Lists, lists, lists
Lists, lists, lists

Life ring and amazing floating torch
Life ring and amazing floating torch

EPIRB
Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB)

Our model is demonstrating the latest in self-inflating life jackets
Our model is demonstrating the latest in self-inflating life jackets

The last essential item on our list was a pair of jack stays. This became a real sticking-point. Jack stays are safety lines that run all the way along the deck from bow to stern. The idea is that whenever you leave the cockpit, you clip your safety harness to the stay and you then get freedom of movement while remaining attached to the boat. The jack stay obviously needs to be strong and well-made, since it is supposed to save your life if you get washed overboard. They’re not an off-the-shelf product, though; they need to be tailored to each individual boat.

Australia is, unfortunately and in line with many other western countries, becoming increasingly litigious, and we found it very hard to find any company that would make them up for us for fear of legal action if the stay should fail. The general consensus was a shaking of heads and tutting, and “we used to make them all the time, but….”

Eventually, however, we met up with a rigger who was prepared to take the risk. He made us a beautiful set which fitted perfectly, and we finally felt that we were ready to go cruising.

Personal harness (black) clipped onto a jackstay (blue). Note also how filthy the boat is!
Personal harness (black) clipped onto a jack stay (blue). Note also how filthy the boat is!

We had about a week encompassing Christmas and New Year. Theoretically, we could in this time sail all the way up the Australian coast from our home mooring in Pittwater, New South Wales, up to the next state, Queensland. However, we fully expected the weather to throw in a few spanners, and in any case we wanted to enjoy the scenery and see what there was to see, so we decided to head for the next available deep-water anchorage, Lake Macquarie, and take it from there.

One small step
One small step

The week started with rough weather, so we pottered around for a few days inside Pittwater, trying out some new anchorages and practicing single-handed sailing.

Route planning
Route planning

When the weather finally improved, and the forecast swells dropped below two metres, it caught us by surprise with only half a tank of fuel. We had intended to leave at dawn, but even though we anchored overnight outside the fuel station, we still had to wait for it to open in the morning, and so we didn’t actually clear the heads until ten. However, it was blowing around twenty knots and we figured that we should be able to make good speed. How refreshingly naiive we were! We had not factored in the fact that we were heading north-east into a nor’easterly wind, across a south-easterly swell.

A yacht cannot sail directly into wind; to travel upwind, it has to tack (zig-zag) from side to side. This substantially increases the distance that you need to travel in order to get from A to B. The swell was also a real pain. Usually swell follows the wind, so that you are travelling in more or less the same direction as the waves. On this particular day, the swell was crossing the path of the wind, making the waves steep and confused, so we spent a lot of our time climbing up waves and then falling off the top to crash into the trough, before the climb up out to the next one.

A cruising yacht accelerates only slowly; when your speed is continually being scrubbed off in every trough, its hard to build up any momentum, and as the boat wiggles over the waves it is hard to keep the sails at anything like the correct angle to the wind to provide motive power.

And finally, we were sailing close-hauled. A note here for the uninitiated about points of sail. If you are standing at the helm and the wind is coming from behind your shoulder (known as broad reach or running, depending on exactly where it is coming from), the hull sits flat on the water and the sails need little attention. It is possible to leave the wheel unattended for short periods and nothing bad will probably happen; more sensibly, you could turn on the autopilot and sit down and relax. Sailing with the wind coming from the front (close reach, close hauled) is more exciting; essentially you are flying a small aircraft sideways across the water, always threatening either to stall or to dive. The sails need constant trimming, the deck is heeled over at up to 30 degrees, and you are quite likely to get wet from spray and even broaching waves. In these conditions, the autopilot simply doesn’t respond fast enough and human control is essential.

All points of sail are equally valid and will get you to where you want to go. Some are just faster or more efficient than others. In a pottering-about or racing situation you just take whatever wind there is and deal with it. Cruising books, on the other hand, always talk about how important it is to make sure that the wind is behind you. Now we really understood why. When you’re just messing about in sheltered waters, you can always change direction and go somewhere else when it gets uncomfortable; in a racing situation, you only have to hold on until the next buoy. However, out to sea, you are travelling in the same direction for hours, days, weeks; the choice between fighting the wind and waves every minute of the time, and just relaxing and letting the autopilot sort it out, quickly becomes a no-brainer.

Nevertheless, we soldiered on. Our instruments were showing speed through the water of three knots. We were pretty sure that the instrument needed calibrating and was reading about a knot too low, but that still wasn’t fast enough to get to port before dark, so we turned on the engine for a little extra power. Purists will probably stare aghast, but it gave us an extra couple of knots and, in our book, safety is better than style.

Going out of our Heads
Going out of our Heads

We had logged on with the coastguard when we left, and they were passing our paperwork up the coast from station to station. Periodically we called each station on the radio, and reported our best guess of what time we would reach the next one. Our guesses, based still on our original estimates, were pretty much on the nose, so we felt that we were doing something right. Of course, one of the important things about checking in with the coastal patrol is that you actually know where you are when you speak to them, so I had to periodically go below and see how the coastline (now several miles away) matched up with the chart. In this we were considerably helped by a book of photographs and charts published by Alan Lucas, a local sailor who has extensively surveyed this part of the coast. This made the task much easier than doing it from the official chart alone, but I still had to hang on to my seat while the boat pitched and crashed, trying to concentrate on little symbols on a big piece of paper that kept threatening to roll up.

Inevitably, I got seasick, but the jack stay allowed me to hang over the side with impunity, and the breaking seas quickly washed the transom clean.

Time passed. The seas got bigger and more confused. We passed one landmark after another, until at last we came in sight of Moon Island, which guards the entrance to Lake Macquarie.

The entrance to the river crosses a shallow sandy bar. As Australian bars go, it isn’t too bad, but it was still going to be touch and go with our two-metre draught. For the time of the tide, though, the charts showed that the bar should be open to us. The key was to line up with a row of port marker buoys which pointed the way to the dredged channel. However, on rounding the island, we found that the seas were so crossed-up and confused that we couldn’t see any buoys at all, just violent whitecaps.

Eventually, however, after bringing the sails down and slopping back and forth under power, we found the first of them, which led to the second, and to a clear shot at the bar. Lucas suggested hugging the port markers as we came through the breakwater, so that’s what I did, watching in bemusement as the depth-sounder dropped to only a metre of clear water under the keel. I waited for a break in the surf, and then gunned it through; the depth-sounder read 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2… and we gently tapped the bottom, once, twice. The numbers started to climb again: 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 metres. Clearly our depth gauge needed recalibrating to account for a 20cm error.

As we crossed between the breakwaters, dusk fell, and some previously unnoticed, bright blue lead markers lit up in front of us. They were not on our Admiralty chart and off to one side of our position; presumably the channel had been moved since Lucas had done his survey. We made a note to keep an eye on them on the way out. Meanwhile, we were through and in the channel.

It was still shallow and narrow, and it was hard to see the coloured channel markers because of all the christmas decorations on the shore, but we got round safely and picked up a visitor’s mooring in a few metres of water. Swansea Bridge was closed for the night, and wouldn’t be opening until the morning.

Safe haven
Safe haven

In the morning, the bridge opened, and we motored through.

Swansea Bridge
Swansea Bridge

On the way through
On the way through

Looking back at Swansea Bridge
Looking back at Swansea Bridge

Lake Macquarie

We weren’t in the lake yet, by any means; there is a long and winding channel over shifting sandbars from Swansea Bridge into Lake Macquarie proper which, combined with a fast-running tide, made for an interesting trip. Once through the channel, we found a pleasant, large, and above all shallow lake, well populated with services.

Lake Macquarie
Lake Macquarie

Over the next few days we tried out a few anchorages, watched the New Year’s fireworks, visited a few marinas, and generally relaxed. Our favourite place turned out to be the Lake Macquarie Yacht Club at Belmont, where we secured a berth for a week so that we could take the train home and go back to work.

The Lake Macquarie Yacht Club, Belmont
The Lake Macquarie Yacht Club, Belmont

Running Home

The following week, with the forecast showing nor’easters and very little in the way of swell, we rejoined Pindimara for the trip home.

A gentle run before breakfast
A gentle run before breakfast

In a light pre-dawn mist, with the rising sun shining directly into my eyes, I failed to see one of the channel markers. Since the channel zig-zags about to follow the shifting sands, the result was an impromptu off-road shortcut which saw the bulb keel firmly embedded in the bottom. With a strong current running, it all got a little exciting until I managed to turn her around and power back the way we’d come. Bronwyn has been below when we’d hit, and had taken a bit of a tumble, so I was relegated to coffee duty while she took over the helm. While still wagging her finger at me, Bronwyn then ran aground herself; this time we were exactly between the channel markers in precisely the right place. The tide was high: it was just too darn shallow, whatever it said on the chart.

After an interesting time trying to refuel (most of the fuel docks in Lake Macquarie are too shallow for us, and the one that is deep enough, runs with a 6-knot current), we anchored up close to the channel entrance and waited for morning.

The bridge opened for us, we followed the leads out across the bar, and we were back in the open sea.

What a difference it made going in the other direction! The deck was flat and the sails well-behaved, and we easily got up to four or five knots.

Just cruisin'
Just cruisin’

After some hours of breezing along, Bronwyn went below to sleep, and I tied off the boom and switched over to George the autopilot, who could easily cope with these conditions.

This was clearly the way to do it. We made a note never to beat into wind again.

Through a dodger, murkily
Through a dodger, murkily

Balloon over Canberra

It was just before dawn, and a crisp cold breeze seeped in through the glass doors of the hotel foyer. A half dozen voyagers had assembled, bleary-eyed, at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra, to meet the crew of Balloon Aloft. Outside, an elderly four-wheel drive manoeuvred into position, trailing behind it a mysterious, gloom-shrouded package. We hurried aboard and were driven to the top of a nearby hill where our pilot, Alan, let off a couple of small black helium balloons and carefully watched as they zigzagged back and forth through the air streams. After a brief discussion, Alan and his ground crew, Rod, agreed on this mornings launch site, and we all piled back in for the journey back down the mountain.

The site that they had chosen was a piece of waste ground on the edge of the city, and it was already filling up with balloonists both private and commercial; obviously everybody had come to similar decisions about their launch site. We found a space in the middle and all mucked in to help unpack our craft. First came the basket, sturdily constructed from wicker, and divided internally into three compartments, one for the pilot and gas tanks, and the others for passengers. Then came an enormous bag, from which we unrolled the nylon canopy onto the frost-coated grass, a long worm trailing from the basket and out across the field.

Can you tell what it is yet?
Can you tell what it is yet?

Finally we unlimbered a small petrol generator and a large electric fan. While I held open the canopy, the fan pumped cold air inside, so that the whole thing started to billow and to slowly unfurl into a bit squashy sausage.

Filling the canopy with cold air
Filling the canopy with cold air

The rushing air was very cold, and I was glad of my gloves, but while I was standing there the pilot was rigging the gas bottles to the burners on top of the basket. Since the basket was lying on its side, the burners were aimed straight past me into the hole in the canopy. After a brief warning, the pilot lit the gas and a huge roiling flame roared past me and into the balloon. Suddenly I wasn’t cold at all.

Filling the canopy with hot air
Filling the canopy with hot air

Slowly the balloon began to take shape.

Checking the vent at the crown
Checking the vent at the crown

Shadows
Shadows

200707Canberra35

Those magnificent men in their flying machines
Those magnificent men in their flying machines

The crew poked around pulling out folds and making sure that the control lines were not tangled, until the whole canopy lifted up and rolled the basket upright. We all jumped on to it to keep it on the ground and then clambered in. The basket was untethered from the 4WD, the pilot let off a stream of flame into the canopy, and we were airborne.

Flame on
Flame on

We're flying!
We’re flying!

At about a thousand feet, Alan switched off the flame and everything went quiet and still. The patchwork quilt of the land below drifted silently by, and the sun warmed our frosted fingers. Since we were drifting with the wind, there was no breeze in the balloon. Those few sounds that we could hear from the ground came with startling crystal clarity.

Lake Burley Griffin
Lake Burley Griffin

Suburbia
Suburbia

Reflections in the lake
Reflections in the lake

 

A fine way to travel
A fine way to travel

200707Canberra12a

Alan did a courtesy radio check with the local airports tower, and then took us up to three thousand feet, where an air stream pushed us in the direction he wanted, right across the centre of Canberra. From that initial hilltop exercise with the helium balloon, he had formed a mental picture of all the criss-crossing air streams above, and could steer us in any of a number of different directions simply by changing altitude. Far from being at the mercy of the elements, balloons can be flown with pinpoint accuracy. Alan explained that when they aren’t taking paying passengers, he and his fellow balloonists often compete in balloon trials, flying from way point to way point and fulfilling tasks such as tossing a bean-bag onto a target on the ground, or picking up a handkerchief from the grass. Others practice bouncing off the water of the lake.

We were not competing, of course, we were just along for the ride. Ballooning is a beautiful way to travel. Even sufferers of vertigo have nothing to worry about. The basket feels rock solid underfoot, and does not swing or flex. The ground drifts by below, looking more like a map than the territory, and there is no real impression of height, just of peace and calm. Our views to the Brindabella hills were breathtaking.

Bronwyn and the Brindabellas
Bronwyn and the Brindabellas

As we drifted in over the suburbs, we began to hear dogs barking. This seems to be a peculiarity of dogs; they bark when a balloon passes over their house, even if they are inside and the gas burner is quiet. Nobody knows how they detect the balloon floating silently far above the rooftops, but they do.

Eventually, however, the trip had to end. Once the sun gets too high in the sky, the thermoclines start up and ballooning becomes less predictable. Alan took careful note of the wind direction and called Rod, who had been patiently dogging us in the car below, parking up at intervals and waiting on various roadside verges for us to sail overhead. We were going to land on a rugby field that they happened to know had a broken lock on the gate which meant that they could get the car onto the pitch. The two of them have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the accessible green areas of Canberra, but even so, Alan said that sometimes they had to put down somewhere inconvenient which meant carrying the balloon out and/or bribing the landowner with champagne to open the gate for them.

There are control lines that lead to a vent in the canopy that can be used to spin the balloon around or, as now, to let hot air out of the top in order to lose height. We dropped gently down, just clearing the rugby goal posts, and threw a line to Rod, who guided us down the last few tens of metres.

I've caught a big one!
I’ve caught a big one!

Just in case the basket tipped over onto its side or got dragged along on the ground, we all adopted the landing position, which involved crouching down in the basket, hanging on, and waiting for everything to stop moving. The actual landing was very gentle, and it looked for a moment as if the basket was going to stay upright, but it gently rolled over onto its side, still buoyed by the remaining hot air in the canopy.

Rod fought a little with the huge bag, but finally managed to wrestle it to the ground, and one by one we hopped out to help. Repacking the balloon is quite easy with half a dozen willing volunteers, but must be hard work with only two people. First it is squashed up into a long sausage, and then it is carried and crammed, armful by armful, into the bag from which it came. Naturally it still contains a lot air, so we ended up with a laughing pile of people all rolling about on top, trying to get the last few metres under control. Finally we hoisted bag and basket onto the trailer, and piled happily back into the truck.

It was just about time for normal people to be getting up out of bed, and we knew that back at the Hyatt there was champagne waiting to help us to start our day.

Looking for a forest

We’d been scouring the internet for forests for sale, applying our standard criteria for new purchases:

  1. Priced under $100,000
  2. Situated 1 hour from an international airport
  3. Situated 1 hour from an international port
  4. Depressed economy with a likelihood of recovery within a decade

We had found two areas of the world that seemed to comply, eastern Canada and southern Tasmania. There were some nice sea- and lake-front properties up near Halifax, where we reasoned that the economy, which has been in a bad way since the crash in fish stocks some decades ago, might recover if global warming caused the North West Passage to open up and container ships started coming ‘over the top’.

On the other hand, we don’t like Canada’s tax laws, but are already subject to Australia’s, so we had a closer look at Tasmania.

Down in the far south of the island state, much of the land facing the d’Entrecasteaux Channel has been (at least theoretically) subdivided into rural plots. Over the last hundred years there have been several attempts to build new bush towns down there, and the councils hold maps with named roads and numbered plots, but development never kicked off and there is no sign of this on the ground. Mainly it’s all unmarked post-logging new-growth forest. However, the plots exist as legal entities and are all owned by somebody, typically by a local resident who bought them up as an investment. Now those residents (or their descendants) are passing away and willing their land to their children. However, Tasmania has moved on and those children don’t want to live on the land, they want to make their fortunes in the big cities on the mainland. Many of these plots are now up for sale, as those children try to cash up and move on.

The d'Entrecasteaux Channel near Hastings
The d’Entrecasteaux Channel near Hastings

Having drawn up a short-list of some half-dozen candidates, we flew to Hobart, hired a car, and spent an enjoyable rainy weekend stomping around in the bush with an obliging agent from Tasmanian Private Realty.

This forest in Cradoc also had pastureland, but needed an access road over swamp land
This forest in Cradoc also had pasture land, but we’d need to build a long access road over swamp land
Nice view from a forest above Franklin, but a little too close to our neighbours, and the trees were a bit scrubby
Nice view from a forest above Franklin, but a little too close to our neighbours, and the trees were a bit scrubby
This property near Hastings was mainly cleared with a half-finished building in it
This property near Hastings was mainly cleared with a half-finished building in it
This property in Surges Bay had been logged too recently and hadn't recovered yet
This property in Surges Bay had been logged too recently and hadn’t recovered yet

At the end of a long but very interesting day, we arrived in Lymington where there were three connected plots for sale. It was almost dark as we clambered around in the damp undergrowth, but we liked what we saw and decided to return again next morning.

We were up bright and early and, after breakfast in the pleasant local town of Cygnet, drove out to Lymington. There was an old logging track that led past Lots 1 and 2, which then petered out before reaching Lot 3. All were for sale. Lot 1 was on the flat with some pasture, Lot 2 sat at the bottom of the hill, and Lot 3 ran up the hill to the top. As was usual with these kinds of plot, there were no fences or border markings of any kind.

From the logging road, Lot 2 is on the left and Lot 3 can be seen in the distance ahead
From the logging road, Lot 2 is on the left and Lot 3 can be seen in the distance ahead

We were drawn to Lot 3. It has the advantage of sitting at the top of the hill at the end of a blind road, so it would be very private. The border with Lot 2 is marked by a winter creek. The other three sides of the square border forestry land, and when I rang the council to see if they had any plans for it, they told me that there it was such a thin inaccessible band that it would never be worth anybody’s while to log there again.

Looks like it was logged about 30 years ago
It looks like this property was logged about 30 years ago
Having a good look around in the undergrowth
Bronwyn has a good look around in the undergrowth

There is a good covering of different trees of different sizes, and the undergrowth is thin enough to allow access to the whole property. The rural zoning means that we can build a house or not, as we feel fit. As a bonus, Copper Alley Bay at the bottom of the hill has moorings for deep-keel yachts, and – as residents – we would be able to put in our own mooring for a minimal fee. The nearest town, Cygnet, has shops and pubs and a hardware store, as well as some nice little restaurants.

We think we’ve found our new home.

Moorings in Copper Alley Bay
Moorings in Copper Alley Bay

First Maintenance

We sailed, and sailed. We sailed in heavy winds, and practiced reefing, both together and single-handed. We sailed in light winds, and tried our light genoa. We went out into swell, and practiced hoisting and lowering sails on a heaving deck. We stayed out overnight and practiced anchoring.

Off we go again!
Off we go again!

We booked marina berths, and practiced entering them both forwards and backwards, in wind and in current. We stayed overnight in berths, and practiced setting mooring lines and springers. We practiced picking up a mooring under sail, heaving to, and crash-stops. We practiced using the autopilot, and steering to the wind, and steering to a pre-set course. We even tried steering with the emergency tiller, which really wasn’t a lot of fun.

A Touch of Wind

One morning, after a pleasant night at anchor, a big storm started to brew. It took us a few hours to sail out of the secluded creek where wed been staying and into the main body of the river, by which time it was gusting an exciting thirty knots or so. We put in a couple of reefs and headed down the Hawkesbury river for home. The wind got steadily stronger, until we reached the point where we thought that it would be prudent to bring the sails down altogether, and motor. The main dropped down just fine, but the foresail roller furler jammed with about a metre of sail still sticking out. It didn’t look much, but boy! did it have an effect as the winds got up to 35 knots. We were heading into wind, and the steering was all over the place as intermittent gusts grabbed the sail one way or the other, but there was no way that I was going forward as it was flogging dangerously and we had no tethers. The fight was hard, and we soon got tired. We were still a couple of hours from home, so we nipped into aptly named Refuge Bay to pick up a mooring and see if we could sort it out.

The first mooring that we picked – which was, necessarily due to our lack of precision steering, in the open far from shore – was a disaster. We got attached alright, but that little square metre of sail just kept on powering us forward, dipping the bow under the water first to the left, and then to the right. I tied myself on to the thrashing deck, and by dint of some interesting ropework, gradually got the free end under control without being hit on the head very much at all, and built a sort of rope cage around it to stop it from thrashing so much. By this time, the waves around us had breaking white tops and we were being pelted with spray, so we decided to move to a more sheltered mooring before figuring out what was wrong with the furler.

Across the bay, close in to the shore, was a mooring that looked OK. Since we now had proper steering, we tucked in behind a sheltering rocky peninsula and celebrated with a bite of lunch while we watched the white-tops rage past. We now had time to peer up at the foresail and pull and poke at it, and we came to the conclusion that in the excitement of high-wind furling, the first few metres had probably folded over and furled backwards. This would mean that as the rest of the sail furled correctly over the top of it, the twisted portion would be pulled ever tighter until no amount of grinding on the winches would get the last part in.

The only way out was to deploy the headsail, and furl it back up again. The problem, of course, was that we had to do this downwind (you can”t realistically furl on a mooring, or upwind), and so in the interim we would be sailing shoreward with a fully powered headsail in 35 knots, with only one chance of getting it right, and banking on the hope that our analysis was correct and there wasnt something else fatally wrong with the furler…

We waited for a lull, then motored out into the breaking swell. I ran down to the bow, removed my jury-rigged fix, and ran back to the stern. The foresail deployed with an evil crack and then it was winch, winch, winch, all the while keeping an eagle-eye out for backwards folds, until the last blessed metre rolled safely around the stay. Superb. Better turn now, before we hit the rocks.

Out in the channel, the wind increased to 40 knots, and since we were approaching the headland leading to the open sea, the swell was increasing to suit. However, Pindimara felt safe and happy, and the motor had plenty of power in hand, so we ploughed on.

Bronwyn in 40 knots. Shortly after, it was 50 knots.
Bronwyn in 40 knots. Shortly after, it was 50 knots.

At the mouth of the Hawkesbury is an area of confused waters where the river meets not only the sea, but also the mouth of our home Pittwater arm, and the waters around Lion Island, which is a big slab of rock that reflects any swell back at a 45 degree angle. Its a bit of a maelstrom at the best of times, and there are some broaching rocks on the lee shore leading to Pittwater. However, we are familiar with the area and it holds no fear for us, so despite staying a safe distance from the shore, we were not too perturbed and could concentrate on rolling over the swell without getting the decks too wet.

We were quite surprised to find a small open metal boat motoring along in the trough of the swell, but you get fishermen everywhere and we turned away to give them some space. Suddenly they started waving and shouting; their engine had chosen that moment to give out and they were drifting onto the rocks. There were four people aboard, none with life jackets and, apparently, they had no oars.

The gusts were now hitting 50 knots. We circled around, wary of the rocky shore, and tried to throw them a line. It was incredibly difficult to stand on the heaving deck and throw a heavy, wet rope with any kind of accuracy, and I suddenly gained an immense appreciation for the people who do this for a living. A couple of attempts fell well within reach of their boat, but now it seemed that they didn’t have a boat-hook either; evidently I had to actually drop the rope inside their tiny little vessel.

All the while Bronwyn was fighting to avoid the rocky lee shore, and trying not to crush their little egshell with our five-tonne hull, which meant keeping at least one trough away from them. Over the radio, we could hear the coastguard rejecting calls from any boats in inland waters; all their efforts were concentrated on a series of dismasted yachts and men-overboard along the coastline. We weren’t going to get any help from them.

At one point I did manage to get the end of a double-length rope into their boat, but somehow while they were making fast a knot came adrift and they ended up with both ends of one of our mooring lines, while I was left standing with a loose end of a second one secured to our boat. We were just going round for another try when we spotted another small motor launch heading our way. We intercepted it and asked if they could help. They were much closer in size and weight to the stricken tinny and I thought that they should be able to get in close without danger, and that is what they did.

We hung around and escorted the pair as the new boat towed the old one out of danger, and then watched in stunned amazement as a fuel can was passed over and their engine sprang into life. The idiots had run out of fuel! Even worse, without any acknowledgement or backward glance, they then motored off towards shore, taking our mooring rope with them, and we never saw them again.

Ah well. At least it gave me something interesting to write in the ships log.

Updating the Captains Log at the end of the day
Updating the Captains Log at the end of the day

Many feet make heavy work

We had also been taking on board a lot of guests. We soon decided that although it is technically possible to sleep six on board (and day-sail with eight), a total of two couples aboard is really the maximum if you want to have a good time. As captain, we are responsible for all crew, however inexperienced, and we felt that responsibility keenly. After a weekend of entertaining, however enjoyable, we often felt as if we needed another weekend off in order to recover. And then we had the guests who insisted on “helping”, and others who just broke everything they touched… Thankfully, these were in the minority, and of course on most weekends we had a real ball even if we were completely knackered.

Chris pretends to be happy about far too much wind
Chris pretends to be happy about far too much wind

Parties at anchor were one thing; it wasnt until we started giving interested friends basic helming instruction and found ourselves quietly compensating for their mistakes that we realised just how far we had come since our first forays onto Lake Burley Griffin. It was also always a lovely moment to see somebody suddenly “get it” and become a completely natural helmsman.

A season of sailing, and a season of guests, all took their toll on our nice shiny boat. Inside and out she started to get a bit ragged around the edges, and we began to notice obvious scratches and stains in the fittings, and wear and tear in the equipment. It was time to call a halt to the festivities, and do some maintenance.

Up the mast

One of the items that had been broken right from the start was the close-hauled indicator, an instrument that tells you where the wind is coming from. In actual fact, that didn’t bother us greatly because it isn’t particularly useful in ordinary sailing. You can get the same information from the wind arrow on top of the mast, the telltales (our wedding ribbons!) flying from the stays, the state of the water, the wind on your face, and so on. The real purpose of the close-hauled indicator is to feed wind direction information to the autopilot. Our autopilot has two modes; one where you simply give it a compass heading and it chugs along in that direction (useful under motor), and the other which is supposed to emulate a self-steering windvane (a kind of extra sail and rudder which you find on proper cruising yachts). The idea is that you can set the sails, and then tell the autopilot to always maintain the same angle to the wind, thus giving you a break from steering.

The wind sensors at the top of the mast
The wind sensors at the top of the mast

This still isn’t critical for anything, but its an expensive piece of broken equipment to carry around, and in any case, since the sensor is at the masthead, it gave me the perfect excuse to climb up the mast. There are a number of authentically nautical ways of going aloft, but I already owned a perfectly good climbing harness which I trusted to keep me safe while abseiling down waterfalls in the Blue Mountains If I was going to climb a fourteen-metre mast, then I wasnt going to mess about with unfamiliar techniques.

In actual fact, climbing is a bit of a misnomer. You wouldn’t want to put your dirty great feet on the expensive aluminium spreaders, and the mast itself is shiny and smooth without much in the way of finger-holds. No, what you do is assign a likely-looking crew member to the winches, attach the main halyard (and the topping lift as backup) to your harness, and lie back in luxury while she winches you to the top.

Helloooo from the top of the mast
Helloooo from the top of the mast

This is what Pindimara looks like from up there:

Seagulls eye view of Pindimara
Seagulls eye view of Pindimara

Buffing and Polishing

Our yacht is made of fibreglass. We had naiively assumed that this was a fairly indestructable material that would look good with nothing more than the odd hose-down now and again. However, in the marine environment, the gel coat discolours and even oxidises. Add to that the roughening impact of endless guests and their bags, and the deck and the inside of our cockpit began to look decidedly shabby.

Scratches on the deck
Scratches on the deck

I tried to buff the deck myself with a 12 volt sander and a sheep’s wool pad, but it was impossible to get a good finish. We engaged the services of our friendly local shipwright, and the weekend after a phone call telling us that she was as good as new, we popped out to the mooring expecting great things. Sadly, it was not to be. The yacht, which we had recently cleaned inside and out, was absolutely filthy and the cabins were full of dust. The deck was, if it were possible, even more matt than before, and the various old oil stains and bird droppings had apparently been ground into the deck with a power sander. The cockpit itself, which had been our main concern and the reason for getting the job done in the first place, had not been touched apart from to fill it with a layer of dried paste and some old rags. We were not amused. After some quite energetic discussions, the shipwright agreed to waive the bill, and we looked around for somebody else to do the job.

The general consensus among local people was a company called Reflections, who agreed to come aboard during the week and sort it out. After their phone call, I rode straight from work to the marina, got in the Zodiac, and rowed out to have a look, preparing myself for the worst. When I got to the boat, I almost didn’t dare set foot aboard. Somebody had apparently taken our yacht away and replaced it with a new one; it was an incredible transformation. In addition to spotless, shining decks, our teak flooring, which had always been a sort of beech grey, was suddenly a rich golden colour. I rowed straight back to shore, headed for their office, and willingly gave them a pile of cash. What an incredible job!

Compare and contrast with the previous photo
Compare and contrast with the previous photo

Sucking oil

Pindimara’s motor is a three-cylinder 29-horsepower Volvo Penta diesel engine. The service intervals are 100 hours, or once a year, whichever is soonest. We had now owned her for a year, and I had long been suspicious that precious little maintenance had been done thus far; not unless the previous mechanic had carefully repainted all the new filters in the original Volvo green colour.

Volvo Penta MD2030 lives under the stairs
Volvo Penta MD2030 lives under the stairs

In addition, I am always uncomfortable running an engine that I haven’t seen the inside of, so it was time to roll up my sleeves and get oily. Being more used to land-based engines, I had to learn some new tricks. Even changing the oil was interesting. Since the bottom of the block rests directly in the bilge, there is no room to get a tray underneath it. In fact, you cant even get a spanner to the drain plug. What you have to do is to buy a special pump and suck all the oil out from the top. I read various manuals and descriptions of how this process was supposed to work, and all clearly stated that the oil was sucked out of the dipstick tube. I managed to buy an oil pump (a nice shiny piece of engineering, made of brass) without any problems, but just could not fathom how I was supposed to push the sharp end down a tube that was almost completely inaccessible and shaped like yesterday’s share index. After much cursing, and to-ing and fro-ing with bits of brass and plastic tubing, I finally banged my hands painfully on a hitherto invisible pipe projecting from near the base of the block. Aha! A special, purpose-made oil pump tube. How convenient. From then on, it was just a case of pumping. And pumping. And pumping…

It works!
It works!

The Penta is water-cooled, by means of a seawater heat exchanger. All the various filters are easy enough to check and to clean, but the screws that held in the pump impeller had clearly never been moved, and one of them snapped right off, so that I was obliged to call in the local shipwrights for a bit of work with a drill and thread-cutter. The impeller is downright weird; it’s made of rubber and is designed to be far too big for the hole it turns in. The crankshaft obviously provides enough power to turn it, but it looks like a piece of old chewing gum when you finally cram it into place. As for the fuel filters… I broke two strap wrenches trying to get them off, and postponed it for another day.

Scrubbing the Bottom

It was by now some eight months or so since we had treated the underside with antifouling paint. During the process we had been forced to miss out on treating a transverse strip that had been occluded by the load-bearing strap at the yard, and I’d been keen to drop under and see how that patch was doing. For some weeks I had also been noticing a distinct sluggishness in the engine response, so one day at anchor in a small bay, I donned a wetsuit and went down to have a look. The strip of untreated hull was thickly overgrown, but I had expected this and had brought a stiff brush to scrub it off. However, there were other surprises in store.

Growth on the sail drive, and on the band of untreated hull
Growth on the sail drive, and on the band of untreated hull

First of all, I found a length of fishing line wrapped around the prop. This had been intercepted by our line-cutter which had almost cut it all away, so it wasn’t hard to pull out the melted remainder. The real surprise was the amount of marine growth over the propeller and the sail drive itself. You may recall that while we used expensive semi-professional paint for the major fibreglass portion of the hull, we had borrowed some cheap copper-free paint from a neighbour to do the few metal parts; the sail drive and the through-hull fittings. This was, it now turned out, a mistake. While the main bulk of the underside was perfectly fine and untouched by marine life of any kind, all the metal fittings, including the crucial seawater intake vents, were festooned with coral. An hour or two with a snorkel and brush soon sorted that out, and then it was time to quit working, and go sailing.

The Floating Gourmets

There is a whole gourmet philosophy, eloquently espoused by Mireile Giuliano in her landmark book French Women Don’t Get Fat, that says that food should not just be treated as fuel, but should be enjoyed. In contrast to TV dinners and fast takeaway food, she suggests that we should return to the old-fashioned notion that mealtimes are an occasion. The table should be cleared and set, the TV and computer should be turned off, and everybody should sit down and concentrate on the business at hand, which is to eat, drink and be merry.

We couldn’t agree more, and, on land, have found that little touches such as clearing the mail off the table and lighting a candle before dinner have a wonderful focussing effect on the palate. We also buy only fresh, in-season produce, and don’t have or need a freezer or a microwave, much preferring the taste and flexibility that comes from freshly prepared ingredients.

Rather than hastily cramming pizza over a magazine, we like to dine in style on artistically presented fresh food, perhaps accompanied by a glass of wine or two. Rather than gulping down the food in haste before returning to some interrupted project, we find ourselves relaxing, taking our time, chatting and laughing, often finding that our evening meal stretches out through another leisurely bottle of wine until it is time for bed.

This is, of course, our land-based philosophy. Reading the cruising tales of other couples, we couldn’t help but notice that many of them adopt a calory-counting, expeditionary, “Its Thursday so it must be tinned spaghetti” style of provisioning. On the face of it, that makes a sort of practical sense. Lots of similar objects (cans, packets) are easier to pack together than lots of dissimilar ones (leeks, eggs), and its pretty easy to deal with inventory when you can just count how many tins are left in the locker.

Living out of a Box

We were still a couple of years away from setting off into the Pacific, so we had plenty of time to experiment. We decided to try to develop a processed-food menu that could fit into a standard sized plastic box. Our reasoning was that we could pack one box per week full of useful ingredients, and combine them in different ways to give some variation, while maintaining a standard inventory.

We had a lot of fun hunting through unfamiliar aisles at the supermarket, perusing use-by dates, discarding packaging, and finding out the most efficient way of cramming all the stuff into one big 3-D jigsaw puzzle and still get the lid on. Finally, after several nights and a lot of rethinking, we succeeded.

The box was pushed into the corner of the kitchen, waiting for a suitable date to start the next phase of the experiment: living out of the box for a week. Days passed, and it never seemed to be quite the right time to start. First, strawberries came into season, and then some friends came over for dinner, and then we were going away to a wine fair. The box sat, colourful labels frowning at us through the transparent plastic. Still, we reasoned, at least we were testing the longevity of the products.

Weeks later, we decided that wed had quite enough procrastination, and started in on our menu. Now, Bronwyn is a quite remarkable chef, and can turn almost anything into a delicious feast, but we were suddenly faced with entire meals consisting of nothing but dried and processed foods. There was nothing wrong with each individual dish, but we very quickly found that there was a terrible sameness about everything, and all the joy went out of our mealtimes.

Rotting Food

On day three, we gave up. It was time to re-think the whole thing. We began to buy fresh and preserved foods simply to leave them lying around in the house. Our flat became a treasure trove of vegetables and bags and packets, stuffed away into odd corners and under the sink, to see how long they would last before going putrid.

We also moved some of the more likely candidates to the boat, and left them at the back of lockers and in the bilges to see what would happen to them. On the whole, we were favourably impressed. With the exception of supermarket vegetables (refrigerated in transit, which ruins them) most things were pretty resilient. Vegetables from the greengrocer were just fine, lasting weeks or, in the case of some root vegetables (one particular sweet potato springs to mind), months.

None of this struck us as being too surprising. People have been keeping vegetables on shelves and in larders for thousands of years, but it is curious how we have been infected with the insidious viruses of “due dates” and “refrigeration”. Once you get used to ignoring them, provisioning gets a lot simpler.

We made some interesting discoveries. For instance, in the Arab world, butter can be bought in tins. When we got hold of a tin and discovered that it is made in New Zealand, we thought that we had it made, but it turns out that the only way to buy it in Australia is to order it to be shipped at great expense from America. While doing some research into other possible sources, Bronwyn discovered a whole host of American survivalist websites that, as well as teaching you how to skin a cougar or defend your house from marauding aliens, had many useful things to say about the preservation of food. Butter can be boiled and then stored almost indefinitely in sealed jars; we tried it, and it works just fine. Some of the most interesting and innovative recipes of all come from The Hillbilly Housewife.

Bread Yeast Cultures

Many cruising books mention how great it is to have a sourdough yeast culture aboard, so that you can bake fresh bread. Some of those books make a big deal out of how hard it is to keep the culture alive, discussing the perfect container and position, and laying out complicated routines for feeding (even to the extent of cutting short shore leave to rush back and feed the yeast). This seemed a bit excessive, so we performed some experiments.

We started various yeast cultures from commercial dried yeast, from the sediment in the bottom of a beer bottle, and from the scrapings of root vegetables. They all worked just fine, although the commercial strains were more active. We fed them on different kinds of flour, and discovered that they liked strong bread flour the best. We tried a few different containers, but in the end settled on a simple plastic tub.

Then we got nasty. We let the culture dry out and die, and then a week later added a bit of water and flour, and it sprang back into life. We put a sample in the freezer for a fortnight, and then woke it up the same way. We left the lid off the tub and let the whole thing go green and furry; when we scraped the mould off and added flour and water, back it came. These cultures are unkillable!

Once a day we just throw most of it away, and add some water and a handful of strong flour. That’s it. There is no drama if we miss a day or two. Sometimes if we’ve been particularly mean the mixture starts to smell evilly, but after a day or so it always seems to come right… and if we really need to bake something and the culture is having a bad day, we can always start a new one with commercial dried yeast. Oh, and it makes wonderful bread.

Yoghurt Cultures

We also acquired a yoghurt maker, which is simply a double-walled thermos flask. You mix some milk with natural yoghurt (or with commercial yoghurt mix) and put it in the flask with a dose of boiling water in the separate compartment. Once the lid is closed, the water keeps the inside of the flask nice and warm and, overnight, you have as much fresh yoghurt as you like.

We weren’t planning on taking any cows with us on the boat, so we tried it both with UHT milk and with reconstituted powdered milk. Both worked just fine.

The Tale of the Zodiac

In a recent incident involving a broken propeller, I had deliberately sacrificed our poor inflatable tender to protect the hull of our yacht from impacting an oyster-covered pier.

The tender wasn’t doing us any good at the marina, so it came home to live on the balcony of our flat. Every day I would pump up the poor flaccid thing, add soapy water, draw circles around the biggest bubbles, and then patch them. As the days (and expensive patching kits) passed, it soon became clear that this wasn’t really sticking-plaster territory. The gashes were so big that I was having to patch my patches just to cover them. A more drastic solution was needed.

Taking it to Zodiac for repairs would cost almost as much as a new tender. However, we had been noticing adverts for something called “Tuff-Coat“, which was a repair paint alleged to bond to hypalon and repair pinhole leaks.

Well, we certainly had pinhole leaks; dozens or perhaps hundreds of them. We resolved to give it a go, but also to cease operations when our material costs exceeded $500; after all, a brand new Zodiac only costs a couple of thousand, and ours had already enjoyed a number of owners before we laid our hands on it.

My daily routine changed. Every day I would pump the boat up, add soapy water, draw circles around the largest bubbles, and then dry it off and add another layer of Tuff-Coat.

The stuff certainly seemed to do the job, but for every hole that was repaired, a bunch more would be revealed. It became a bit of a joke, checking to see how soft it had got while we were away at work, but one day we returned from a whole weekend away to find our tender standing as full and proud as the day we’d left it.

The aged rowlocks had broken long ago, and since then we had been paddling canoe-style. This was fine for two people, but tricky with only one. I celebrated the end of my nightly balcony visits by fitting shiny new rowlocks with lockable paddles, and painting all the woodwork a nice bright gloss blue.

It was a proud moment for Mr Stubborn.

Problems with the Propeller

Pindimara came equipped with a neat three-blade folding propeller, designed to collapse in on itself when under sail in order to reduce drag. It was supposed to be nice shiny brass, but in fact bore a closer resemblance to an old hub cap that had been languishing in a coral reef.

We were up on the hard for our first antifoul, so I had a brief window to work on dry land. Wielding a wire brush on an angle-grinder, I made short work of all the white stuff, and then took the whole thing apart and greased it and reassembled it with a liberal coating of lanolin, which looked great but made me smell like an old sheep. Then I painted the sail drive itself with several coats of special aluminium-friendly light blue paint, and stood back to admire my handywork.

Lovely, it was. A work of art.

On the Monday morning after our weekend of anti-fouling, we were up bright and early to supervise Pindimara’s return the water. It was raining heavily when we arrived, and we couldn’t find any of the slipway staff; presumably they were all hiding somewhere dry and wouldn’t answer their radios, so we had to go to work and hope that they’d reappear and put her back in the water later that day.

In the evening, we turned up once again and there she was waiting for us, tied up to the fuel dock. While Bronwyn drove the car around the bay to our home marina, I motored off into Pittwater to meet her. Once in the open water, I couldn’t resist opening the throttle to see what would happen.

Before we started this work, she would barely make one knot under power. Four knots… five knots… six knots… seven knots. Incredible, and very, very smooth. Pretty happy, I steered through the moored boats in the falling dusk to the marina dock, where I could vaguely see Bronwyn standing on the deck, and the low shape of the Zodiac in the water beside her.

The tide was low, and the flow was opposed to the rain and wind. I had to be careful in my approach, and so nosed up ever so carefully, squinting in the dying light. Then, suddenly, the engine hammered loudly under my feet, and I couldn’t get any control.

I managed to swing away from the shore, and came back around for another try. Had I hit the bottom? Was I tangled in fishing line? Bronwyn waited, puzzled, on the dock as the boat ran around in circles. I really couldn’t make any sense of what was happening; steering and power seemed to come and go at random. Finally I got the nose up to Bronwyn, who hopped aboard, trailing the tender behind her.

Immediately I put on the power to prevent the current from ramming us into the dock, and although the bow peeled away, it still all felt very wrong. We were almost around and clear when the engine started banging again and the yacht started to crab mysteriously sideways toward an oyster-encrusted piling. I glanced back; if I let off the power, the stern would connect with the dock; if I did nothing, we would hit the piling.

Bronwyn stood on the pulpit, shouting something, and I realised that she still had the tender’s painter in her hand. I could only see one solution; I hit the power, the engine slammed up against the soles of my feet, and the yacht ploughed into the Zodiac inflatable and crushed it against the razor-sharp oyster shells. Seconds later, we bounced free. I killed the power, and watched as the crushed remains of our tender bobbed sadly to the surface, remarkably still afloat despite the slashes down its side.

Getting to the mooring was hard work with little in the way of power or steering, and eventually we realised that we would have to stay the night and sort it out in the morning, because there was no way that we were rowing back to shore in half a tender.

Morning came. The tender looked bad in the light of day, but thankfully the yacht had sustained no hull damage at all. With a slack tide and no wind, we motored around a bit trying to figure out what was wrong, but in the end crabbed our way to the water dock and asked a local firm of engineers to take a look.

Later that day, I got a phone call. They’d sent a diver down, and apparently one of the blades of our shiny beautiful folding propeller was twisted backwards, giving us two thirds forward motion and one third backward. No wonder the engine was banging! The poor thing was trying to jump up through the hull with the forces that were being applied to it. I asked the engineers to take her back up onto the slip and fit our emergency backup prop so that we could take a look at the old one. Deeply embarrassed, I could only think that I’d somehow fitted one of the blades backward, and I couldn’t understand how that was possible.

Once we got hold of the failed prop, it became clear that I hadn’t been immediately to blame. The brass teeth that work the folding mechanism were old and worn, and in the final analysis, the layer of coral that I had so diligently removed was all that had been holding the thing together. The prop would have failed eventually, but cleaning it up had hastened the day.

Our first Antifoul

Yachts share the sea with all manner of interesting organisms, many of which consider a shiny hull to be a particularly salubrious place to set up home. First to arrive is an algae scum, which coats the surface. Next come coral spores, which settle in the algae and hatch into proper corals. Once these are established, they provide food and shelter and – most importantly – anchor points for molluscs and barnacles and other animals. These latter are quite capable, once they establish a good hold, of drilling through solid rock; fibreglass is no problem to them at all.

The trick is not to let them get a foothold. One option is to swim under the hull every weekend and clean them off; this technique is used by particularly diligent racers. Most people choose to apply ablative antifouling. This is a copper-based (ie hopefully unpalatable) paint that is designed to slough off when rubbed. Any organisms that are not deterred by the poisons in the paint, are dislodged next time the boat moves, because the outer paint layer as well as anything rooted in it gets rubbed off by the action of the water passing the hull. Obviously, as time goes on, the paint all wears away. About once a year you have to put new stuff on. The only way that you can do this is to haul your boat out onto the land.

Dry-dock space at the shipyard is expensive. Since we knew that the first thing that we would have to do on land was to scrub all the life-forms from the hull, and since there were such a lot of them, it made sense for us to do as much as possible in the water first, while it was all still soft. I donned some scuba gear and spent an enjoyable and fruitful day wiping off algae and chipping at coral with a range of household implements. The best tool turned out to be an aluminium-handled window-wiper. I used a suction cup to keep me in place while I did some of the flatter sections, but generally I just swam up and down attacking each part in turn.

I’d never worked underwater before, but I soon got used to it; the trick seemed to be to consider whatever surface I was working on to be a vertical wall, regardless of which way up I was in the water.

Since I was weightless (well, neutrally buoyant anyway, thanks to the scuba gear), it made no practical difference whether my feet were pointing up or down, so long as I could reach the work area.

Fish soon realised that food was raining down from above, and for the latter part of my work, I was accompanied by a variety of sea life. Some larger fish even helped by nibbling loosened bits of coral directly from the hull. A couple of air tanks later, the job was completed. Hard work, but satisfying.

We had been told that it is usual to spend a complete weekend doing antifouling, so that is what we booked. However, the weather had been bad recently and so there was a backlog of boats standing (expensively) on the slip waiting to be worked on, and a rapidly building queue of people demanding their turn at the spaces. After a few weeks, though, we did get a spot, and out she came, back onto the same slip on which she had been surveyed.

First step was to borrow a water-jet lance and clean all the accumulated gunk off the underside. Right away, my scuba work paid off dividends; it would have taken us a day just to clean the accumulated coral off the bottom. As it was, even though we only had a couple of weeks of algae accumulation to remove, the shipyard staff were hanging around trying to take away the water jet before we had really finished.

The next step was to rub down the old paint layer with wet-and-dry to get a good key for our new coat. This was quite a laborious process, especially as the previous layer hadnt been applied particularly well, and streaks and drips abounded. Working at full stretch above our heads, we were soon turned bright blue from head to toe.

Eventually we were satisfied. Protecting all the edges with masking paper, we started to roll on the undercoat.

The antifouling paint itself was blue, and the undercoat, grey. The idea is that if we see any grey in future, we’ll know that this years antifouling has worn away and it is time to do it again. Our blue paint was some very expensive semi-professional antifouling that we were assured was the best thing to use. We had been a little dubious about the cost, but now we realised the value of that advice. Other workers were having real problems with drips and runs, while ours went on smooth as silk and drew envious glances.

Back at the time of the survey, we had noted that the moulding around the cast iron keel was cracked and was peeling away in several places. Six months later, the problem was much worse. Nick, an engineer loosely attached to David Bray Yachts who dropped by to make sure that we were OK, attacked it with a borrowed angle-grinder and repaired the damage. He wasn’t at all surprised, and said that we could expect similar damage every time we did our annual slipping.

Once the new moulding was dry, we could finish up the antifouling. We continued painting until we’d run out of paint, putting on three layers overall, and four layers in high-abrasion areas such as the bow, waterline, and leading edges of the keel.

The only area that we couldn’t paint was directly underneath the sling that was supporting the yacht, resulting in an untreated band about a hands-width across running from waterline to waterline just aft of the propeller. The guy next to us, a seasoned antifouler with whom we had been sharing tools and advice, propped up his hull with scaffold poles, undid the sling, and painted underneath. We simply couldn’t bear to try it; that sling was holding up hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of yacht, and no way were we going to mess about poking poles into the hull. We resolved to dive underneath occasionally to keep an eye on the strip,and left it at that.

Fitting Out

We Venture Forth

The first time we took our new yacht out, we just motored around Pittwater, huge grins splitting our faces from ear to ear. We own a yacht! We own a yacht! After a while, once we’d done a few doughnuts and got the feel of her, we unfurled the foresail and pottered along with the motor off. We’re sailing! We’re sailing! It was exhilarating, wonderful, a dream come true. And, it must be said, somewhat scary; not the act of sailing particularly, but the fact that we were floating around on our life savings.

Then, rounding a headland into the jaws of the open sea, we crossed into several metres of swell and everything suddenly went topsy turvy We were only pottering along under the headsail and didn’t have the headway to handle the gusty conditions. We concentrated very, very hard to beat our way back around the headland, and came through unscathed, only a little shaken, and if truth be told, very pleased with ourselves.

We go shopping

So… we bought a second-hand Zodiac inflatable tender from eBay; unbreakable crockery, cutlery, cookware, breakable glasses (never drink wine from plastic!) and bedding from the local shops. We bought a fire-blanket, a man-overboard ring, a floating Dolphin torch. We bought buckets and brushes and polyrope and string, batteries and tools. We bought life-jackets, cleaning equipment, boat-soap, a chart.

Liveaboard life

We were living in Canberra at the time, a landlocked city in a landlocked state, and since we found it quite inconvenient to have the boat moored some four and a half hours away, we moved to Sydney. We were starting new jobs and were still househunting, so the obvious thing to do was to live aboard.

This we did for quite some time, and thoroughly enjoyed it, although it did become clear after a while that the yachty lifestyle and the office lifestyle don’t really coincide. Each morning we got up, climbed into the tender, and rowed ashore with all our office and motorcycle gear in waterproof bags. Then we showered and changed at the marina and rode to work; reverse in the evening.

This was all fine and lovely on a peaceful warm day (although rowing home on a sultry evening wearing motorcycle armour over business attire is a sweaty exercise), but got to be tricky when there was a storm blowing. On one occasion, a hailstorm hit half way out, and we had to take shelter on the closest moored yacht as chunks the size of golf balls rained on our heads and metre-high waves filled the Zodiac.

One of the lessons that we had absorbed from extensive reading was that when accidents happen to yachts, it is almost always because they have a personal reason to be at point A when the environmental conditions require that they remain at point B. Examples we had heard of included trying to get to a particular country to meet relatives at an airport, and, of course, racing. Getting to work in the morning, and getting back to the boat for dinner, seemed to us to fall very much into this category, and applied just as much to our little Zodiac as to Pindimara herself, who was of course perfectly safe on her mooring in all weathers.

One final problem was the wear and tear. Full-time liveaboard inevitably results in some knocks and dents to the interior woodwork, and messy accidents do happen in any home. We were trying to keep the cabins as pristine as possible with an eye on future resale value, and we soon noticed that the interior was looking a bit shabby and we had no time or opportunity to do anything about it. We also started to notice problems with damp from condensation, and salt in all the fabrics.

Somewhat regretfully, we rented a flat nearby. This did not, of course, mean that we stopped sleeping over on board, and it certainly did not stop Bronwyn from creating ever more sumptious and creative banquets in the galley. The wine cellar aboard began to rival, and then to exceed, the one that we kept at home.

Unwanted Guests

One evening, we were sitting in the main cabin, variously reading cook books and sewing new sail ties (an early lesson learned: on a yacht, you can always find some little task to fill any spare time, if you are so inclined) when something moved on the floor. Always alert to any changes in the boat, I had a look, and found a large cockroach. Not thinking too much of it (all the ports were open, and it was a warm summers day), I lobbed it into the sea. A few days later, we saw another one. Then another.

A little investigation in back corners revealed little piles of droppings, so we cleaned them up and sprayed Morteine around the place. However, it soon became clear that we had a bit of a problem. It all came to a head one night when I was woken by a two-inch roach running along my arm and across my hand. I overarmed it out of the hatch, and later that day we rowed our budgie ashore (it was living in a cage on deck) and set off three roach bombs, enough to clear a small house.

For weeks afterward, dead and dying insects appeared all over the boat, but we didn’t see any more fast-moving ones. Of course, we had been reading up on the issue, and it seemed that we had only ourselves to blame. Our lockers are spacious, and things tend to move about in them, so we had compartmentalised them with cardboard boxes from the supermarket. Apparently, roaches love to lay their eggs on the cardboard that they find in warehouses, where they remain until they find themselves in a warm, damp environment into which they can hatch.

The common answer is to ban all cardboard from the boat. This made a mess of our packing arrangements, and we did the best we could with fabric and bubble-wrap. Some cruisers go further, and ban all paper products, including the labels on tin cans, but that seemed somewhat excessive, and in any case, who could live without books? We sterilised all our remaining paper on deck in the burning summer sun.

As weekends of sailing went by, we started to think about maintenance. We bought deck oil and gelcoat restorer, metal polish, a small passive dehumidifier. There seemed to be no end to the things that we needed to, or could, or felt like buying. A trip to the local chandlery to buy a split-pin would likely as not result in a triumphant exit with armfuls of shiny new equipment.

We had been told to expect to spend 10% of the purchase price per year on maintenance and upkeep; surely this could not be true? We started to keep records.

Although we had promised ourselves that we would go sailing at least once a fortnight (or demand a damn good reason why not), there was a period of some six weeks through the hottest part of the Australian summer when we were on holiday in other parts of the country. During this time, Pindimara just sat and bobbed in the warm sea. On our return, we dropped the mooring and motored off, happy to be afloat again, but as soon as we cleared the marina, we knew that something was very wrong. The motor felt very strange, and even on full bore we weren’t getting anywhere near the rpm that we should have, and were making barely a knot through the water.

We returned to the mooring. I cleaned all the engine filters and checked the oil. We ran the engine in neutral, and it seemed just fine, so it was on with the mask and snorkel and over the side to have a look at the propeller. The problem was easy to see. While we’d been away, an entire coral reef seemed to have grown on the hull, complete with large fish peering disdainfully at me through the fronds. In fact, there was so much growth over the sail drive unit that I couldn’t see the propeller at all.

It was, quite clearly, time for our first antifouling treatment.

Crocodiles at Yellow Water

We awoke in our comfortable glamping tent in Kakadu National Park, and headed off to a temporary dock on Yellow Water Billabong to board a small tourist boat.

We had (inadvertently, of course) timed our arrival to perfection. With the Wet just starting, the billabong was just starting to flood its banks, and where the water had swept over the surrounding floodplains, life was erupting with exuberance.

Spectacular white egrets, flashing azure kingfishers, red-winged parrots, and all manner of wildfowl filled the lush floodplains or hid in crevices amongst the mangroves.

In the topmost branches of the trees, sea-eagles and storks had already kicked their fledglings out of their nests. In only a very short time, not only the river banks and the undergrowth, but even the treetops themselves would be under water. Within days, the boat dock that we had used to embark would be completely inundated and the operator would have to move to another site.

The boat itself was basically a metal raft built on two flat pontoons, each with an enormous outboard engine hanging off the back. Our guide chugged us around into the reeds and under overhanging trees, pointing out different birds and plants, all the while exhorting us not to hang any limbs over the water, just in case.

She explained that in the Dry, which is the colder season, crocs tend to sun themselves on the banks, but here in the Wet they are happier to stay cool in the water, and are more than capable of jumping aboard if they think that they can get an arm.

While we all marvelled at the wonders of nature about us (and pondered the possible fate of two men out fishing in a little tin boat) we were of course hoping for our first glimpse of the real king of the waterways.

Then suddenly a small voice cried “Crocodile!” and everybody ran to what happened to be Bronwyns side of the boat, which tipped alarmingly and left her staring at close range at eight feet of heavily armoured reptile.

From then on, we saw crocodiles everywhere. Rooting around in the mangrove palms, rising mysteriously to the surface around us and then cruising effortlessly out of our way, only sinking out of sight when our wake got too annoying.

Eventually, even the youngest and most vociferous of us had seen enough, and we returned to the dock, to our bus, and finally to our shack in Darwin.

It was by now raining heavily, so we caught a taxi for the short ride into town. After a refreshing beer or two, there was only one public building left that we hadn’t visited, so we ducked into the air conditioned cinema to cool down.

Kakadu’s Wet begins

Although most of the Kakadu National Park is nominally floodplain, for eight months of the year it consists of dry mud and burning bush. The area has only two seasons, the Dry and the Wet. We had arrived just at the end of the Dry, when the rivers were beginning to fill and the plants were starting to appear lush and green, growing frantically prior to the complete inundation of the Wet.

Kakadu National Park

Our driver, Andy, had driven us in a bus from Darwin. He led us as we climbed to the top of a red mesa-like outcrop that gave stunning views of the flood-lands below.

Until relatively recently, these plains were home to herds of water buffalo descended from draught animals freed after Darwin was built. Extensive culling has now reduced them to somewhat less than their plague proportions, and now the environment has recovered, although the lush green grass is, inevitably, another introduced species planted by early cattle-ranchers.

Nevertheless, it is an extraordinarily impressive sight, the vivid green contrasting with the bright red rock, all under the merciless glare of the Northern Territories sun.

Aboriginal Rock Paintings

The Park is managed by a committee of ten aboriginal elders and four local rangers, and much of it is off-limits to tourists because it is used for traditional living. The information provided in various centres scattered around the Park give an interesting mix of aboriginal and European facts, stories, and artefacts, and in fact this rock on which we were climbing is one of the areas aboriginal rock painting sites.

I’d never understood rock painting before, but our driver, Andy, managed to bring the paintings and the culture to life for us. Aboriginal culture is multi-layered, such that as you get older you are taught deeper insights into the topics that you already know, until you are an elder and know all the layers; however, you will still only know the layers of the stories in your particular area or clan.

The information that you learn, handed down in stories about spirits, is all to do with survival in the bush and your behaviour in society. The volume of this information is staggering, but as Andy said, they have 50,000 years of culture to draw upon.

In Kakadu, each picture represents an event or happening, typically a particularly large prey animal. Stories are linked to the painting, which is often laid over older paintings. In this area, animals in particular are pictured transparent in order to display the best way to cut them, and to emphasise those parts which make good eating.

Deluge

As the day wore on, clouds began to gather on the horizon. Andy started to look worried, and began collecting us from the far corners of the mesa and shepherding us down to ground level.

What was wrong? It was only a rain cloud.

What we hadn’t taken into account was the sheer volume of precipitation that can fall in these parts. We had heard stories of people being cut off by the start of the Wet, but it didn’t seem real up here on this enormous rock in the sunshine.

Andy had told us about one particular guy who had been camping down in the woods one year, and when the rain started to fall he had been flooded out of his tent so he carried his stuff up to the nearby toilet block. After a while, the building flooded, so he climbed onto the roof. The water continued to rise until it reached him there, too, so he started to climb up the corrugated iron water tower on the roof. When the rescue helicopter finally winched him off, he had cut a hole in the water tank and was sitting inside, watching the level come still higher.

Andy wasn’t kidding us around; he was seriously worried that one or more of the rivers that we had forded on the way in might now be too deep for the bus to get out, and he practically force-marched us back to the vehicle and set off at full speed.

The rivers that we had crossed on the way there had just been trickles across the road, but now after just a few hours, and before the rain had really started, we had over a foot of water across the road.

“Are there crocodiles?” asked the little boy who was obsessed with them, as the bus eased slowly across.
“I’m not wading,” said Andy.

Camping Deluxe

We were going to stay overnight at a camp site inside Kakadu National Park. This is a permanent fixture, an attempt to keep everybody in one place and prevent the sort of problems that had befallen the chap in the water tank.

Our large, permanently-pitched tent was certainly a lot more comfortable than our shack in Darwin. It came equipped with camp beds, mosquito netting, a cooking tent, a swimming pool, and a bar, so we weren’t complaining.

We had a very comfortable stay, and the bird noises during the night were wondrous.

Darwin, and the road to Kakadu

The Green Gecko

One of our standard ploys when planning a trip to a new city, is to book accommodation that is outside of the central business district. The night life is likely to be more relaxed, the prices cheaper, and we are more likely to encounter real people in real situations than if we were to follow the standard tourist route.

For our trip to Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory of Australia, we followed our usual formula, and had booked a room in backpackers’ accommodation out in what seemed, from the map, to be the far suburbs.

The airport shuttle dropped us outside a rather ramshackle building populated entirely by dope heads. Struggling a little with the humid forty-degree heat, we managed to extract a key from somebody, and located our room, which was in a sort of shack out the back. Inside it was your standard Australian backpacker’s, with a simple bed and a sink, a broken air conditioner, and some six-inch cockroaches. No real surprises, apart from ducking to avoid the roaches as they flew around like pterodactyls, so we ditched our gear and tried to locate a bus or taxi into town.

We couldn’t find anybody at the hostel who could talk to us without drooling, so we set off on foot in what seemed to be the correct direction. Almost instantly, the heavens opened and we were caught in a stunning deluge. We couldn’t avoid getting wet, but a bus shelter prevented the enormous rain drops from bruising us too much.

Darwin

As quickly as it had started, it was over, and we continued our journey, drying almost instantly in the heat, and idly wondering how far we would have to travel before we found either a taxi or a bus to take us into the CBD. We passed a bar (I lie. We stopped in for a beer), then another bar, and then, mysteriously, our journey was interrupted by the sea. We had just walked clear across Darwin.

It really is a very small city indeed. After we’d had beers in the few bars, watched some locals fighting each other, ascertained that all the shopkeepers were quite excited because “a cruise ship is coming in tonight”, and checked out the seafront (Do Not Swim Here. Salty Crocs), we had pretty much exhausted the possibilities of the town, and all before four o’clock in the afternoon.

A brief perusal of the literature in the tourist office revealed that most of the attractions on offer were not in Darwin at all, but several hours plane-ride away in Cairns, a completely different city in a completely different state.

Next morning, then, having unapologetically “done Darwin”, we boarded a small bus and headed out toward the wilderness of Kakadu National Park.

Termites on the road to Kakadu

The bus seated 22, but thankfully there were only seven of us aboard to share the welcome air-conditioning. One was a kid who was desperately keen to see crocodiles. Whenever we passed a body of water of any size, he would hop up and down and ask, “Are there crocodiles?”

Andy, our Swiss driver, would inevitably reply, “There are crocodiles everywhere”, but although we stopped a few times to check, they were being quite elusive.

Andy took us to a few pit-stops along the way, including a country pub with two penned crocodiles in the car park, a fresh and a salty, but the boy wasn’t impressed with tame ones.

Along the road, we started to see enormous termite cathedrals. Stopping to examine them, we could be forgiven for thinking that they were completely lifeless under the baking sun, but Andy showed us how to tell the old, uninhabited mounds from the live ones. The signs are small, but here and there you can find small rough patches where a dead mound has been damaged. Poking a small hole in the smooth integument of a living mound, however, and within seconds the insects within are rushing around repairing it. The speed of the response, and the speed of the repair, was fascinating.

Margaret River

A pleasant night at a vineyard B&B, and an equally pleasant morning chatting with the owner, a retired butcher, who cooked us some excellent sausages and answered all my presumably dumb questions about the rammed earth from which buildings hereabouts are constructed.

Heartbreak Trail

Looking around for another challenge after descending the Bicentennial Tree, I saw a roadsign that said something like “Heartbreak Trail blah blah prohibited blah blah dangerous”. This was obviously the direction that we needed to go.

Much of the soil in this area consists of marble-sized clay balls. The local construction method of ‘rammed earth’ involves mixing these balls with a little cement and pouring it into a form to build, well, just about anything. The thickness and air-gaps make for a good insulating layer, and the striking red colour blends into the equally ruddy landscape.

I was interested to know how these little red marbles felt under the wheels, so off we rode into the bush.

The GS performed admirably, and the riding position, which had been pretty uncomfortable on the road, started to make sense on the dirt. The marbles weren’t anywhere near as awkward as, say, dry sand, and we had a very pretty tour of some deep forest with pristine waterfalls. It was here that we discovered that the wind that blows off the Southern Ocean is so laden with salt that the rivers in this region are slightly saline. Possibly this is the reason that this is the area for catching marrons, billed as the third largest crayfish in the world.

Eventually the dirt petered out into tarmac, and we trundled along at a steady 140 through endless forests until, with some shock, we came out amongst crowds of tourists in the town of Margaret River.

Margaret River

There seemed to be more people in this tiny little one-horse town than we had seen in our entire time in Western Australia. Margaret River is not unlike many such attractions, in that there is no real reason to go there apart from the fact that everybody does. Most such towns have had to build something as an excuse, such as the Worlds Largest Prawn / Trout / Merino Sheep / Playable Guitar, but we looked in vain for anything resembling a Worlds Largest Drinkable Bottle of Wine. Instead, we picked up a few supplies, and headed to the Island Brook Estate Vineyard, where we had booked accommodation for the night.

The chalets at the vineyard were superb, set in complete privacy deep in old-growth forest, and surrounded by mature black boys* (*for non-Australians, a black boy is a kind of grassy palm (Xanthorrhoea) that is designed to be burned by bush fires at regular intervals)

After a very pleasant wine-tasting, we enjoyed drinking our purchases with barbecued steaks, on the deck under the stars.

A beautiful blue morning was heralded by the fluting of bush birds. The calls of these western lorikeets and cockatoos seemed much less raucous and more pleasant than those of their eastern counterparts (or maybe it was the wine). Under foot, the bush was alive with tiny flitting insectivores. It was perfect for a long walk before breakfast.

Mammoth Cave

Cave Road runs the entire length of the Margaret River peninsula, just a few vineyards away from the sea. It is named for the enormous caves at the southern end; Jewel Cave, Lake Cave, and Mammoth Cave. It can be hard to get a ticket to get in, but we managed a tour of Mammoth, so called because of its awesome size. Its a heavy tourist site, along prepared walkways with recorded guides on headphones, but well worth the visit.

These caves were not formed by the usual erosion of limestone, but instead by water trickling through sand dunes, forming a crusty cap over the underlying water table. The ceiling regularly collapses, which means that the floor is liberally scattered with the remains of overhead stalactites. All very impressive.

Canal Rocks

Further up Cave Road, a promontory of colourful gneiss has been eroded into a series of channels by the sea. These channels form a maze of rock walls, resulting in an impressive swirl of water as every incoming wave tries to force its way along the narrow canals. It is very unusual and quite beautiful.

Busselton Pier

After a hot but very interesting walk around Naturaliste Point, our tour of the peninsula ended at Busselton, which boasts The Longest Pier in The Southern Hemisphere. At almost 2km, the pier is the result of an arms-race between the need to service ore carriers, and the silting caused by the pier itself. The longer the pier got, the more it trapped sand and silted up, until finally the whole thing was destroyed by a cyclone.

Most of it has since been rebuilt, but parts of the old pier are still visible, particularly at the far end, where they have built a sort of reverse aquarium where you can climb down into a large tank and watch the fish go by. We gave that a miss, as we have scuba dived under many piers and the aquarium was pretty crowded, but the pier itself made a very pleasant walk.

For much of its length, the pier was lined with fishermen, some of whom were bringing up large cuttlefish which made an incredible inky mess. One nice touch was a line of memorial plaques to past residents who had, apparently, spent their lives fishing here.

We spent some time watching a large Chinese family who were reeling in lines and crab pots with such dedication that it looked as if they were provisioning their restaurant for the evening; perhaps they were, because there certainly seemed to be no shortage of fish.

The pier had a very pleasant feel to it. Apparently there used to be a train that ran for much of its length, but it seemed that it had broken down one time too many, and the warped and twisted tracks now just gave one more reason to keep careful watch of your step when the pier narrowed, as it occasionally did, to just a couple of metres wide.

Journey’s End

It was time to return our rented GS to Bike Round Oz, so we rode back to the Darling Range, thanked Mark effusively, and boarded a commuter train into Perth.

We’d thoroughly enjoyed all the wines that Margaret River had had to offer, but it was time for a change of beverage, so after dumping our gear into a convenient backpacker’s, we repaired to the Brass Monkey, where we addressed ourselves to the Matilda Bay ales from the comfort of deep leather armchairs. Tomorrow we would explore Perth, but tomorrow was another day.

Climbing the Karri Trees of WA

We flew into Perth airport, intending to spend some time touring around the south-western corner of Western Australia. We had arranged to hire a motorcyce from Bike Round Oz, whose owner, Mark, picked us up and took us to his house in the Darling Range, where he installed us in a beautiful little converted railway carriage.

Fitted out in dark wood, with a plush red bed at one end, views across the range and a serene farm dam, it was a great place to relax after our flight. Add into the equation a friendly bunch of alpacas, black cockatoos wheeling overhead, and a bottle of gratis champagne, and we felt right at home.

The next morning, after a basket breakfast, we had a look at our ride, a yellow BMW GS1200, a little elderly but with impeccable credentials – it had already been around the world once. “She lost those cooling fins in Argentina…”

After packing a handful of stuff into the very small panniers, we set off southward down the Darling Range. The GS felt like a bit of a pig at first, but was very stable at speed, apart from an inclination to pull hard to the right, and fierce wind noise from the windshield.

The Gloucester Karri

Mining equipment dominated the scenery. Coming into Waroona, a parking lot for mining machinery was quite a shock; absolutely immense vehicles standing shoulder to shoulder in the red dirt, surrounded by cast-off caterpillar tracks. Lining the road near Capel were scrapyards containing enormous pieces of old machinery.

Every signpost along the way indicated a mine or a quarry, and the road was chock full of ore trucks which politely shuffled over to let us past. OK, we got the picture, this was mining country.

As we headed south, the machinery gave way to dairies, and then the cows gave way to trees. Regular trees gave way to big trees, and finally to the enormous timber that characterises the logging town of Pemberton.

Back in the early days of Pemberton’s history, the timber of choice was the Karri tree, a truly enormous species scattered around the local forests. Some of the tallest were spared to serve as lookouts for the ever-present danger of fire, and only these now remain.

The famous Gloucester Karri is sixty-one metres high. Embedded in the trunk are hundreds of steel spikes, and if you are particularly keen, you can use them to climb to the top.

Theres nothing to stop you slipping between the spikes if they are wet or you are careless, so the climb is quite exciting, but the views from the watch platform at the top are worth it, and it was easy to see how useful these trees were in spotting incoming bush fires.

We spent a pleasant night at a vineyard B&B, and an equally pleasant morning chatting with the owner, a retired butcher, who cooked us some excellent sausages and answered all my presumably dumb questions about the rammed earth from which buildings hereabouts are constructed.

Much of the soil consists of marble-sized clay balls, and these are mixed with a little cement and poured into a form to build just about anything. The thickness and air-gaps make for a good insulating layer as well as a striking red colour that blends into the equally ruddy landscape.

The Bicentennial Tree

On the road again, it was time to check out another one of those Karri trees, this one even taller and much, much scarier to climb. The spikes were farther apart, and the trunk was devoid of branches to give even the illusion of safety.

There was a midway-platform with a sign that pointed out “That was the easy bit. Reassess your situation now.” Luckily we had the place to ourselves; I wouldn’t have liked to meet anybody halfway up.

Going for Survey

When you buy a yacht, you need to get a survey, for all the same reasons that you need one when you buy a house (after all, you’re spending similar sums of money). In order for this to happen, the vessel has to come out of the water. This is not a cheap process, and the vendor pays. You can then choose to have a poke around yourself, or pay someone to have a look for you. We asked a few people for recommendations, and in the end settled on Alan, a local diesel engineer who also happened to have experience putting new Bavarias together for the Australian importer. He had a reputation for being picky and pedantic, which sounded just what we needed.

I asked if I could tag along, hoping that I might learn something about the large and complex item that I was (probably) about to purchase. He was more than happy, and in fact it turned out to be the most valuable day off work that I have ever had. Alan was a fount of knowledge on all things Bavaria, particularly which bits to look out for and which bits would need taking care of in the future.

Inside, although we looked at every nut and bolt and panel, almost everything was perfect. The worst things that Alan could find were some rusty worm clips, and a misaligned drain vent to the gas storage locker. The engine looked fine, and the bilges were clean and dry. Towards the bow, there was some fresh water behind two of the bilge bulkheads; this seemed to have trickled down from above. In fact, this jogged Alan’s memory and he remembered having surveyed this boat before; apparently it had been involved in a low-speed collision in a marina and had had all the toe rails replaced on deck. He surmised that what we were looking at was seepage of rainwater through insufficiently sealed toe rail bolts. In fact, up on deck we could still see minor damage in the shape of a slightly crazed gel coat, an unsettled fairlead, and a slightly twisted pulpit; all, he said, nothing to worry about.

The base of the electric winch had been sitting in salt water (hardly surprising since it is mounted in a rubber tray in the bow anchor locker) and the alloy had rotted in an impressive blob of white deliquescence. This, said Alan, looked awful but was normal; in fact, some months later when I got around to scraping it off, I noticed that the task is specified in the annual maintenance procedure of the winch.

Below the waterline, the antifouling was thin but serviceable; it would need replacing in a few months. There was a snazzy folding prop which seemed to be in reasonable condition; we replaced the sail drive sacrificial anodes while we were there. There was one minor problem with the keel. In a few places, the epoxy had cracked, exposing the cast iron hull to the water, resulting in large rust patches. Alan explained that this is normal, but would have to be repaired during the next antifouling.

All in all, that was about it. A list to starboard (revealed by mismatched watermarks along either side of the hull) turned out to be caused by an empty water tank. There was a crack in the autopilot housing which would need to be replaced, and a leak in the aft cabin which seemed to come from rain dripping down the autopilot unit itself. Keeping the pedestal cover on when moored in wet weather would see to that. In fact, there did not seem to be any reason why we shouldn’t buy her, so we did.

Hunting for a Yacht

Interlude

Could we actually live with each other in close quarters for an extended period? We thought that we probably could, but it would be nice to know before we splashed out all that cash on a shiny yacht. Thus, to New Zealand: not to circumnavigate in one of the cruising yachts for which that country is justifiably famous, but instead to trundle around the roads in a tiny camper van. The theory went that if we could cope with that, then we could cope with living aboard a yacht.

It was a tiny cramped space and we did our best, catering for ourselves using the gas stove provided, dropping anchor in a different town each day, even going so far as breaking down deep in an uninhabited national park miles from any help.

We passed all our trials with flying colours, had a great holiday, and emerged with some very firm ideas about interior yacht design. The chief of these was that nothing aboard our boat was going to be dual purpose; we were heartily sick of turning beds into tables, tables into beds, and then finding that whatever it was we needed next was now inaccessible beneath a mattress.

Incidentally, while we were in Auckland, we took a turn at sailing the Americas Cup yacht NZ40, which went rather well.

Lists. Lots of lists.

One thing that we were agreed upon right at the start was that we weren’t going to skimp in the bed department. This may on the face of it seem like a strange first criterion, but we had both been on boats where the quarters were cramped and uncomfortable and it really puts a damper on your day. In addition, we spend a fortune on orthopaedic beds and mattresses at home, and the logic that engendered those choices is just as compelling at sea. David thought that we were nuts, but suggested that we look into centre-cockpit designs, because these tend to have a decent-sized aft or masters cabin.

Given that I was likely to be responsible for running repairs, I wanted a hull material that I understood. Wood and I do not get along, and fibreglass struck me as too flimsy for the open sea. I wanted to come off at least afloat if we hit a sunfish or a shipping container, and so steel was the way to go. Since we were looking at sailing shorthanded, ease of sail handling would be a bonus, so in order to get a smaller sail area it made sense to have two masts with small sails rather than one mast with a big one; hence, we arrived at the concept of a steel centre-cockpit cutter ketch.

We started to make some lists.

Things that we need

  • Large bed (aft?)
  • At least one good-sized locker
  • Ventilation in the main cabin
  • Access to water from the stern
  • Sleep four comfortably
  • Two-burner gimballed stove
  • Ice box / fridge
  • Full-size nav station
  • Shower in head
  • Hot and cold water
  • Traveller not in cockpit
  • Production boat less than 12 years old
  • Depth sounder
  • Sails in good condition
  • Anchor

Things that we would like

  • Full-sized galley
  • Double sinks
  • Four-seater dining table
  • Sea berths
  • Single-handed sailing
  • Stern shower
  • Bimini/Dodger
  • Radar
  • Windvane

Looking at virtual boats

Looking around at the cruising boats available on the market, we found the world awash with proven circumnavigators that exactly fitted our criteria for the money that we had available. The internet is a fine resource, and we spent many a happy evening examining photos of the interiors of second-hand cruising boats from all over the world. Eventually, however, it started to dawn on us that many of these vessels had been on the market for years, and several became old friends as we followed their stories, eagerly logging on each evening to see if this owner or that had added any new gear or reduced the price again as they got more desperate.

We marvelled at all those unfortunate souls, usually Americans, who were apparently stranded in this or that tropical paradise and needed to sell their yacht in order to go home; usually, it seems, because their wives had refused to sail any further and had already flown back home to the US.

After a few months of following the fates of all these forty-foot Adams, Roberts and Van de Stadt ketches, we decided to change tack and look at newer, smaller boats, with a view to trading up later once wed got our sea legs. Not only would this make the learning experience easier, but if we chose carefully, we could hopefully get a more modern re-saleable model which would give us the option of ducking out if we decided that, for some reason, the cruising life was not for us.

Looking at real boats

Then came the Sydney Boat Show. We’d expected to be awed by the yachts, and even more awed by the prices, but in actual fact what we saw pretty much fitted our preconceptions, and the prices were not too shocking. Out of our range, but not shocking. We tried every berth in the sailing marina, and found that almost every designer apparently only catered for midgets. I’m just over six foot, and Bronwyn is a little under, so we’re not mutants, but we simply couldn’t fit into many of the berths provided.

The only design that really blew us away was the Hunter, an American company that was trying to break into the Australian market. Everything was beautifully made, well thought out, and best of all, made for full-size people. The icing on the cake was that, due to the collapse of the US economy, in Australian terms they were remarkably cheap.

We immediately vowed to buy one. The problem, of course, was that since Hunters were new to Australia, there weren’t any second-hand models available. We contacted a few dealers in the US, who pointed out that because of the weakness of the US dollar, they could crate one up, new or old, and freight it to us for less than the price of an Australian model. Although tempting, we couldn’t bring ourselves to buy a boat that we had never seen, and in any case, there seemed something bizarrely wrong about buying a yacht by mail order.

In time, a second-hand Hunter showed up in nearby Pittwater. We hopped in the car for the four-hour trek, but were sadly disappointed to discover that the actual vessel fell far short of the published specifications. It was old and tired, the berths were built for children, quite substantial parts just came away in my hand, and the bilges were full of dirty water.

A little disillusioned, and facing a four-hour drive back home, we got talking to the salesmen and explained what we were looking for. We produced our two lists of wants and nice to haves, and explained our interest in long beds and reasonable resale value.

What you need, they said, is a Bavaria. Now, we had dismissed both Bavarias and Beneteaus early in the game. All of our charter experience had been on these boats, and they were always uncomfortably cramped and badly thought out. In addition, the models that we had visited at the boat show had been shoddily constructed. However, it just so happened that the agent who we were talking to was the sole trade-in dealer for the Australian Bavaria importers, and they also just so happened to have an as-new five-year old two-cabin Bavaria 34 on their books.

OK, OK, we’ll go and see her.

She was gorgeous. She had everything on our wants list, and almost everything on our nice to have list (missing only radar and wind vane). The master’s cabin contained a six foot eight of queen-sized bed. The head was conveniently placed by the companionway. The galley was fully equipped and gimballed for cooking at sea. She had full navigation and autopilot, a furling headsail, single-handed reefing, a spotless teak interior, electric anchor winch… the list went on. She was also only five years old, with an almost guaranteed resale value in the two-to-three year bracket.

  Main saloon, looking aft

The price? A snip at exactly twice our available funds. This was not a problem for our enterprising agent (for the record, David Bray Yachts, we recommend him), who put us in touch with a loan company (DB Finance; we recommend them too) who were happy to arrange an almost profit-free thirteen-month loan for the remainder. We’d heard that finding a mooring was a problem in the Sydney area; David waved that away, he could get us a mooring nearby. There was nothing for it but to go for survey.

Princely Problems in Tonga

After a week of relaxing on Mala Island, we eventually had to rejoin the real world. Early one morning we boarded the little boat and chugged across to meet Dave the driver in his taxi, who took us back through the dawn light to the airport on Niufea.

We presented our pre-booked, pre-confirmed tickets to check-in, where they told us that we could not fly because we were not on the manifest. This was our first introduction to Tongan politics. The King, a generally benevolent and much-loved character, actually spends a lot of his time in hospital in the US, leaving the control of his realm to the Crown Prince, who we heard was a bit of a playboy.

The story goes that whenever a Tongan business is successful, the Crown Prince appropriates it, and it seemed that this is what had happened to our airline. Apparently he needed our seats for some friends of his, and that was just the way it was. We weren’t flying anywhere.

Niufea

Niufea is hardly a metropolis, but we found a nice cafe, and while Bronwyn tried to get onto the internet (four PCs sharing a single dial-up modem), I went in search of the post office. The building, when I found it, was reminiscent of a prison in a spaghetti western. The public was separated from the staff by floor-to-ceiling iron bars, threaded amongst which were dozens of letters which had been addressed “post restante”.

Downtown Niufea

I bought some postcards and stamps to while away the time. Since the post office didn’t have any coins, they gave me my change in still more stamps, and I took the resultant pile of paperwork back to the cafe, where I managed to get hold of a bottle of the elusive Royal Tongan Ikale beer. It’s elusive because most quality establishments refuse to stock it, gleefully quoting stories of all sorts of foreign objects found in bottles since the takeover of the brewery by the Crown Prince. Certainly, I must have got an old, pre-Prince bottle, because it was tasty and refreshing.

Tongatapu

The next day we were first in line at the check-in, and actually got a seat on the plane for an uneventful ride to the capital, Tongatapu. On arrival, we stopped at a cafe for another (perfectly fine) bottle of Ikale, and then headed in the increasingly oppressive heat for the Dateline Hotel, supposedly the quality hotel of the islands, and advertising itself as “The First Bar That Opens in the World, Every Day”. We figured that they might have air conditioning, and since we’d only recently drunk in “The Last Bar to be Open in the World, Every Day” across the dateline in Samoa, it seemed like the reasonable thing to do.

We were greeted by a uniformed bellhop and escorted to a table, which was promising, but noticed that the place looked a little run down. It was with little surprise, then, that we discovered that this establishment, too, was now owned by the Crown Prince. We ordered Ikale, and it must have come straight from the new-style brewery, because it was completely undrinkable. I took a couple of sips, and then felt a compelling urge to go to the toilet. I scuttled in the indicated direction, and entered a marble-tiled, gold-tapped facility that hadn’t been cleaned for months. The first cubicle that I opened (and by this time I would have accepted pretty much anything) was… well… you’ve seen ‘Trainspotting’, right? But I used it anyway.

Back in the bar, Bronwyn had opted for the more sensible water option. Even then, the proffered glass bore enough grease to fry an English breakfast, so we gave up headed back out into the heat.

This was not the last surprise that the Crown Prince had in store for us. Bronwyn had used my mobile to leave a five-second message on her sister’s Canadian answering machine. A month later, when I received my mobile bill, I found that those few words had cost us just under sixty Australian dollars. The mind boggles at what the charge might have been if Michelle hadn’t been away from home that day.

Our final Tongan legacy cannot, however, be laid at the feet of the Royal Family. Somehow or other I had scratched my elbow, perhaps on coral while diving, and the resultant sore was very slow to heal. As we subsequently travelled from country to country it didn’t seem to be getting any better; in fact, if anything, the wound seemed to be getting deeper and wider. After a week or so of this, a doctor in Brussels had a poke around and pronounced that I had a staph infection. “Is that bad?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “if these antibiotics don’t work, then you will lose your arm…”

Mala Island, Tonga

It is relatively easy to fly into the International Airport at Nuku’alofa on the southern Tongan island of Tongatapu. However, since the country of Tonga comprises some 171 islands spread out over 700,000 square kilometres of the Pacific, the chances are that when you arrive, your onward journey will probably be a bit more than a short taxi ride. In our case, we wanted to get to one of the northern islands, Vava’u, and I had been delighted to discover that Royal Tongan Airlines flies an old DC3 Dakota on that route. For reasons that remain obscure, but which are possibly the result of too many childhood Biggles books, I have always wanted to fly in one of these, so we’d arranged tickets.

The DC3 was in fact standing at the airport, but we were led over to another bakelite-era twin-prop of uncertain vintage. The pilot told me that, of the three duplicate flight systems aboard the DC3, usually only the backup and emergency were working, and since the backup had now given up the ghost, he was refusing to fly her.

We were picked up by Dave the taxi driver, a smiling Tongan with interesting teeth, who decanted us into a small boat which putt-putted us across to Mala Island, our home for the next few days.

The boat was piloted by the smiling and eminently capable figure of Henry, who turned out to be General Manager, bartender extraordinaire, and Mr Fixit for the somewhat curious world that we were about to enter. The owner, also called Dave, a rather manic expat Californian, had recently refurbished the small island with the intention of making it a haven and recording studio for visiting rock stars. Be that as it may, he had an enormous stock of name-dropping stories and, apparently, a record label. He was also proud of the consternation that he had caused in the local area by employing a Tongan manager, and paying both him and the rest of the staff “a fair wage”.

Dave gave the impression of being something of a one-man tornado in local Vava’u politics, making himself popular by inviting Tongans to enjoy the facilities, but on the other hand, the Tongans he mentioned tended to be well placed in the royal family and in the police force.

As we were to discover, scratching backs is a way of life here. The deal on Mala Island is that you pay 45 Tongan dollars a day, and then eat whatever you want. On the one hand, this limits you to whatever happens to be in the kitchen; on the other, the food is prepared by Todd, an excellent chef who Dave apparently pinched from some US restaurant.

On arrival, though, we were too exhausted to think, let alone deal with crazy Americans, so we stumbled up the jungle path to our little cabin and into bed, scarcely even noticing then that it was beautifully decorated with traditional Tongan woven leaves and hand-painted papyrus.

When we awoke, we had coffee, we had lunch, and then dozed off again.

Eventually I got up and strolled around the perimeter of the island, an exercise that took less than an hour and involved stepping over a lot of coconuts.

That evening in the central bar area, the beers began to flow, poured by the incomparable Henry. He told us the story about how at age 12 he had left school because he wanted to be a taxi driver. He cleaned and washed and gardened at his uncle’s house until his uncle taught him to drive. That same uncle then spoke to the chief of police and got special permission for Henry to have a taxi licence, even though he was far too young. Many years later, having learnt English and how to deal with tourists, he picked up Dave from the airport, ran a few errands for him, and then got offered the job of General Manager. That, we gathered, was Tonga in a nutshell.

Island time began to kick in.

We dived on some wrecks.

We snorkelled on the reef, and in some underwater caves.

After a while we just had a load of spare scuba tanks delivered to the island, and went diving from our room. All around the island were coral-heads several metres across, each a blaze of colourful life, and each apparently the nursery for one or another species of coral fish.

Divers tend make a lot of fuss about the visibility, or “viz”, the distance that you can see underwater on a particular day or at a particular location. This has never made much sense to me, because you spend most of the time looking at things that are right in front of your nose, so I ignored it when they started to go on about sixty metres of vis. Who wants to see things that are sixty metres away?

I changed my mind on a Tongan night dive. Usually at night you only go down a few metres, and stay within hand contact with your buddy, because it is very, very easy to get disoriented and lost. Not so in Vava’u. The moon shone down to twenty metres almost like daylight, and Bronwyn and I could not only see each other five metres apart, but could even recognise one another amongst the other divers.

And, of course, we met lots of colourful characters while drinking cocktails in the bar.

Savai’i, Samoa

Although we were due to celebrate Bronwyn’s birthday at a restaurant in Apia, Samoa, I needed to pop out to the tourist office to collect our tickets for our flight to Savai’i the following day. The guy in the shop handed me our tickets, but kept a grasp on them while he leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Can you take something to Savai’i for me?” I looked at him with what I hoped was a deadpan look, but which was likely horrified dismay, and said, “What is it?” He burst out into laughter. “Something very important!” and handed me the pay cheque for the bus operator.

Waking after a great night at Sails restaurant, we were up before dawn and into the waitress’ boyfriend’s taxi to the airport, where we were hoping to catch a flight to Samoa’s second island, Savai’i. Everybody said that we should allow an hour for the thirty-minute drive, but we didn’t run into any problems. Even before first light, though, the roads were lined with Samoans dozing in their little roadside fale, waiting for a bus to come along; this seemed to be a national pastime.

At the tiny airport, we watched as some international travellers checked in, each clambering solemnly onto the luggage conveyor so that their total weight – customer plus baggage – could be noted down. Going through our own check-in, we seemed to be the only domestic customers, but we weren’t too surprised as it is only a short hop between islands on a light plane. However, we still had to go through an X-ray, which revealed the penknife that lives permanently in my day-pack. The customs officers portentously decided that it was far too dangerous to allow it on the plane, so I excused myself for a moment and wandered back across the tin shed to the check-in, where I asked if they could hand my knife to the pilot. They looked a bit bewildered, but agreed to do it. I shrugged and headed back to the departure gate; either I’d see it again, or I wouldn’t.

Out on the tarmac stood a little eight-seater twin-prop. We squeezed in with a handful of missionaries, and then the Kiwi pilot clambered in alongside us. With a wide grin, he introduced himself and proclaimed, “Safety Announcement! The Emergency Exit is the same door that you came in. Please fasten your seatbelt. Thank you” and then we were rolling.

After landing a quarter of an hour later, the pilot handed me my penknife, securely wrapped in rolls of paper and tape. “I have no idea why they did that”, he said.

Our bus driver was waiting for us. I gave him his pay cheque, which he in turn gave to a lady in the petrol station, who would give him cash on the way back. There was nobody else on the bus, and Savai’i has only one road, so we had a rather exclusive guided tour around the lush, green, and noticeably cooler southern part of the country.

The island has suffered two major volcanic eruptions, one in 1796 and the next in 1905. This latter eruption lasted for six years, so it is not surprising that much of the geology consists of lava. The black stuff remains surprisingly wet even in direct tropical sunlight, so it is also not surprising that it is popular for crops, and is often seen stacked up in cones around the base of young trees.

The bus ambled around the island. We fed pieces of papaya (and some of my finger) to green turtles in a freshwater lagoon. We climbed down a lava tube, and up into a suspended treetop walk.

Each of these attractions is the collectively owned property of one village, and use of them attracts a very small fee per person, which is used for the upkeep of the schools and so on. This fee is not a tourist tax, it is a long tradition and payable by any outsider whether Samoan or not if they want to use that particular facility. The story of the treetop walk is particularly interesting. It was built by a Canadian who married a village girl, and wanted to find a way to make money for the village without cutting down the surrounding rainforest. The walk was a hugely successful venture, and the Canadian is now Matea (chief) of the village.

We had now almost circumnavigated the island; the last stop was the waterspout at Alofaaga. Another five tale to get in, then a further couple of tale to buy a bag of old coconut husks. A little puzzled, we followed our guide across a cracked and fissured lava flow, with waves hammering in from the sea and exploding high into the air. The ground felt hollow, and thrummed as we walked over it, wheezing and bubbling as each set of waves forced compressed air into the porous rock.

Over to one side, closer to the water, were a number of vertical sink-holes. Here we discovered the purpose of the old coconuts; they are tossed into the hole, and when the next big wave comes along, it blows them out from below at the top of a huge waterspout. Our coconuts were projected fifty metres or more, a stunningly impressive sight, although our guide told us that the waves weren’t especially powerful that day.

Our driver had tried to fit a lot into our day, and it was a bit of a desperate run for the ferry back to the north island. The flat roll-on roll-off barge was just about to depart when we arrived, so we quickly bought tickets and sidled aboard between rows of enormous 4×4 trucks carrying produce, to a seating area on the deck at the back. Here we found that the seats were all packed with locals indulging in their favourite pastime of sleeping.

We stood by the rail, and ate another of the rather bitter, nameless fruit that we had picked up at a market that morning, tossing the husks to the numerous zebra-striped fish in the sea below. It had been a long day, and soothed by the big smooth swells and the warmth of the funnel next to me, I too fell asleep.

Sea Kayaks to Nu’utele

We’d been waiting in Apia, Samoa, for a guy who we’d arranged to take us kayaking. After some considerable waiting (most of it our fault and anyway very enjoyable), he materialised in the form of a Swede, Matz, who loaded us into his elderly jeep and took us to a beach on the eastern end of the island.

Here, amongst hundreds of smiling holidaymakers, we launched the sea kayaks and paddled out into the lagoon.

We soon left the crowd behind. To our left, traditional fale appeared along the shore, against a backdrop of palm trees climbing the flanks of the mountain at the centre of the island. To our right, the sea smashed violently into the invisible reef, breaking into furious surf which petered out suddenly without disturbing the glassy smoothness of the lagoon.

One hour turned to two as we paddled into a mild headwind, and the small island that was our destination grew imperceptibly closer. We were beginning to feel tired when a green turtle popped its head out of the water. Suddenly we realised that they were everywhere, several feet across, heads nervously popping up, spotting us, and then diving quickly away.

We beached the kayaks on the small island of Nu’utele which boasted a handful of waterside fale, owned and maintained by a village on the mainland. Each fale was an open-sided wooden platform with woven palm-leaf blinds around the sides. The idea is that you roll the blinds up or down to create a through-draught depending on the prevailing winds. However, the villagers were expecting bad weather, so they had tied a tarpaulin to the windward side for additional protection. As it happened, this turned out to be a bad idea as the night was hot and still; in the early hours of the following morning I heard Matz untying his tarpaulin to get some air, but I couldn’t summon the energy to do ours.

The traditional Sunday meal is a roast made over a fire in a cooking hole, and dinner comprised the remnants of the villagers’ own repast along with servings of parrot fish. We’d never seen parrot fish on the menu before; they are skinny blue things only about ten inches long and don’t exactly have a lot of meat on them, so we were curious to see how they were going to be prepared. We were a little surprised to discover that each fish had been braised whole, and then simply chopped in half, giving you the choice of either head end or tail end.

Shortly before sunset, the quiet, self-effacing villagers climbed into their boat and putt-putted to the mainland. A few minutes later, we heard a long honking noise from the far shore, the way I would imagine a conch-trumpet to sound, and a little later the Sunday evening service started. The congregation must have been on the beach opposite us, because the amplified voice of the priest echoed across the water, interspersed with Hallelujah!s and applause and singing. We couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he was obviously a skilled orator, switching from what seemed to be fire and brimstone haranguing to poetry and song and back again with consummate ease.  Meanwhile, on Nu’utele, the bugs had started biting, so we retired with a paraffin lamp to our mosquito-netted fale, and listened to the wash of the waves on the beach only a few metres away, the thunderous boom of surf on the reef farther out, and the hypnotic sounds of the amplified priest across the water.

In the morning we were awoken by the sound of the returned villagers sweeping the beach of fallen banana leaves and accumulated debris. Their life is in no way primitive; it is simply traditional, an important distinction. For instance, although our fale was constructed mainly from coconut-trunk spars and woven palm leaves, the cross-spars in the roof were made from pieces of shipping pallet, and the banana leaves were sewn together with string and what appeared to be magnetic cassette tape. As well as the tarpaulin used in bad weather, each fale also boasted a small corrugated iron cap. This motif was repeated wherever we went; the traditional methods were preferred, but if some modern invention could do the traditional job better, then it was used instead.

We paddled out along the reef break to the next island, crossing a rather turbid channel with quite a noticeable rip, and ran the kayaks up onto a coral beach. Steps led up to an automatic lighthouse, from which we watched boobies and frigate birds gracefully riding the breeze. After a brisk swim in the surf, eerie with the never-ending pounding of the reef break just a few hundred metres away, we returned to the fale for lunch.

On the journey home, Matz and I decided to go out through the break into the open sea. This was an awesome experience, for the channel was only about ten metres wide, and on either side the rolling surf built up to an enormous height before crashing thunderously on the reef below. It was a strange feeling indeed to watch the tubes form and the waves rear high above on either side, while we bobbed reasonably placidly on a piece of lightly choppy ocean between them.

We were just about to turn around and go back in, when a large leathery green turtle surfaced right in front of me. Looking out to sea, it had no idea that I was right behind it, and I held my breath as it paddled slowly along with its enormously elongated front flippers. Unlike its smaller brethren, when it finally did see me, it didn’t swim like hell, it just floated gracefully down to a metre or so under my boat, a stunning view through the crystal clear water.

Back on shore, we had an interesting ride home in which we ran first out of diesel and then out of coolant, necessitating some roadside bartering to keep us on the road. Matz finally dropped us at the Millennium, where a porter whisked away our ragbag sacks and bundles and installed them in our room, where we leapt into the shower.

It was Bronwyn’s birthday, and a taxi was waiting to take us to Apia’s top restaurant, Sails, nestled amongst the churches on the waterfront. On the way out of the hotel, Bronwyn got waylaid by a receptionist who wanted copies of our passports or something, but I carried on outside to make sure that the taxi was still waiting. Sure enough, there he was, so I got into the back and explained that we needed to wait for my wife. He smiled and nodded his head vigorously; “Wife,” he said, and started the engine and drove off. Suddenly realising that he hadn’t understood a word that I’d said, I opened the door and bailed out.

The car stopped, and there was a pause. The driver slowly unfolded himself from the driver’s seat and stared across the car roof at me, until a delighted smile broke out across his face and he erupted into peals of laughter. “Your wife! Your wife!”

Once we were both safely installed, he drove us the kilometre or so back into town and decanted us outside the restaurant. Sails bills itself as The Last Restaurant in the World to Close, Every Night, a commentary on Samoa’s proximity to the dateline that had already caused us so much confusion (A couple of days later, we found ourselves in the bar of the International Dateline Hotel in Tonga, which bills itself as The First Bar that opens in the World).

Our table at Sails turned out to be the best in the house, out on the veranda overlooking the harbour sunset. The margaritas were excellent, and the food was astonishing; to taste their Commodore Sashimi alone, it is worth travelling halfway around the world.

Apia, Samoa

As we crowded up the air bridge into Apia airport terminal, Bronwyn ended up slightly ahead of me, side by side with a young local man. He was close to seven feet high, and easily twice as broad as Bronwyn; she looked like a child next to him. Out in the airport proper, we realised that this was standard physique for a Samoan. It appeared through our foreign eyes as if we had inadvertently stumbled on a rugby players convention, if you can imagine rugby players walking around wearing skirts stuffed with large bunches of grass to keep out the cool 30-degree Celsius evening breeze.

Friendly taxi-drivers directed us to their competitor, the airport shuttle. Although we were the only two paying tourists, the bus soon filled up and we found ourselves in the midst of a crowd of chattering locals who were taking advantage of the free lift. They were all happy to talk about themselves, and seemed to consider themselves less the citizens of a particular country and more inhabitants of the Pacific islands as a whole. For instance, one young guy, who described himself as Fijian Indian, had been raised in Tonga, and was now living in Samoa because his sister was at university here. We gathered that, if his sister got her degree, then both of them would be trying to move to New Zealand.

The bus detoured off the tarmac and up a muddy track. Apparently all the local guys were going to the same place, and suddenly there it was, a beautiful white mansion in the rain forest. We said our goodbyes, and the bus plunged back into the darkness. We’d been up since 5 am, and it was now 2 am the following morning. The bus rattled through the night, tooting merrily to every other vehicle, almost all of which were taxis, and occasionally at packs of wild dogs hanging around in the road. It was wet and hard to see outside; we had vague impressions of palm trees, but suddenly we came across three beautiful brightly lit churches, one after the other; then it was dark again. Eventually the trees parted, and we were decanted into downtown Apia. We had a vague impression of the sea, and of a small wood-framed building which was our hotel. A smiling woman, who had clearly been waiting up for us, assured us that she had not, and showed us to our sparsely appointed but pleasant room. The night was hot and humid, but bearable under the ceiling fan, and we clambered into the somewhat rickety bed and fell instantly into a deep and undisturbed sleep.

On the following morning we had arranged to be picked up to go on a kayaking trip. The guy was supposed to pick us up at 08:30, but he didn’t show and we dozed until breakfast, which turned out to consist of white sliced toast and a chunk of pleasant, almost savoury, mango. The coffee was thin and weak, but we had been forewarned and had come prepared with our own ground beans. As we finished our breakfast, an American at the next table begged us for the used coffee grounds from the bottom of our plunger. He said that he’d been in Apia for a while and was dying for a cup with some flavour in it.

Still frazzled from our long trip, we gave the kayak guy until 10:30 and then wandered out into town. Apia is, of course, the capital city of Samoa. On the ground, it is a large-ish village hugging a natural harbour, comprising a couple of shops, the Australian/Canadian combined High Commission, a bank, some insurance companies, and an inordinate number of churches.

A handful of visiting yachts swung serenely in the bay, along with two small container ships of the Samoa Shipping Company, and what was apparently a small tramp steamer. In the shallows close by, a fisherman was casting his net.

We dropped in to the Green Turtle, a backpackers tour operation, and found that the reason that the kayak guy hadn’t shown, was that we had crossed the International Date Line and it wasn’t even Sunday yet; we were reliving Saturday morning. This meant something of a rethink of our plans, which was quite hard as we were very tired and suffering from the heat, so instead we ambled up and down the only two streets in the city until 13:00 when the shops started closing, at which point we checked back in to this morning’s hotel.

After some discussion with the receptionist, we ordered a taxi to take us across the island to a famous freshwater swimming hole which, we were told, was situated at the Centre for Theological Studies. Samoa has a long history of missionaries from just about every Christian group imaginable, even some of the odder American sects, and many of them have stuck. Each church maintains a very strict hold over its congregation in terms of tithes, and enormous beautifully appointed churches tower everywhere over the often far less salubrious dwellings of the locals. Schooling is highly regarded on Samoa, and the Centre was typically well-kempt and spacious. The taxi driver was content to go to sleep until we’d finished, so we left him to it and went to see what we could find.

All the students were deeply involved in the national pastime of Krikiti. This seems to be played wherever a group of young men get together and is vaguely like cricket but played with a rubber ball, a huge three-cornered bat, and a lot of laughter.

One of the players spotted us and ambled over. We handed him a few dollars which entitled us to descend some steps by a derelict church to a stony beach, where a limpid freshwater stream emerged slowly from a rock cave before trickling between some rocks down into the sea. About half a dozen Samoans lounged about on the edge of the pool. We were extremely hot and sticky, and so quickly got changed and entered the beautiful cool crystal water. Small fish nibbled at our toenails as we swam into the cave, revelling in the unexpected cold, jet lag and apathy falling away in swathes.

After some splashing about, chasing after jewelled crabs, and diving for pieces of loose coral, we emerged once more into the sunshine, two very different and much happier people. As we clambered back up the steps, I noticed a rubber ball lying in the grass. Off to one side, Krikiti players were combing the bushes, so I picked it up and lobbed it back. Smiling their thanks, they restarted their game.

Suitably refreshed, cool, and with our jet lag at bay, we were able to pay attention for the first time to the countryside around us. On the taxi ride back to Apia, we passed through a number of villages, the houses ranging in style from simple fale (raised wooden platforms with a thatched roof and no walls) to fully-fledged stone houses. Dominant features were the open-plan meeting places, the ornately decorated family graves in each front garden, numerous wild dogs, and the roadside platforms designed to protect the garbage from them until the refuse truck came by. Any structure that boasted walls was lovingly decorated with paint and fabric in bold colours. The graves were painted brilliant white, and decorated with black volcanic stones.

For lunch we’d already had “Samoan Pizza”, which was topped with ham and egg and was evidently a local joke; now we could see the point, because everywhere were pigs and chickens.

In one village, hundreds of Samoans lounged in and around one of the large meeting fale; apparently, a conference was in progress. In another, what seemed to be the entire population was playing ping-pong. Whenever we saw anyone, their faces were uniformly serious until we smiled or waved, and then huge smiles would break out everywhere in rashes of grins and waves. Everybody seemed so happy and friendly, and indeed, they seemed to have bountiful land and food and everything that they could need. We understood that each village was autonomous, and controlled a particular crop or natural feature, for which a small charge was made to any visitors who wanted to use it. The richest villages tended to control things like water, and indeed we had already encountered a small inkling of this when we handed over our few dollars to swim in the cave.

Back in Apia, the middle of the harbour frontage is dominated by a large colonial-style hotel, the famous a Aggie Grays, relic of the colonial era and occasional home to rich and famous of that age. We had actually tried to book in, but it always seemed to be full, so we decided to go and see what all the fuss was about.

It is indeed a charming place, permanently stuck between the world wars, decorated with fading pictures of the natives taken by some long-ago German photographer. When we arrived, the bar was pretty much empty, so we tried the local Valima beer (a nice brew, clean and somehow Canadian) before embarking on a trawl through the cocktail menu. While I started on the Brandy Aggie, essentially a Brandy Alexander made with coconut milk, Bronwyn went straight for the Aggie Special, a mystery drink that came in an enormous glass the size of a goldfish bowl. This turned out to be a pleasant but potent fruit punch, and the white-gloved bar staff broke out into enormous smiles when Bronwyn polished it off and picked up the cocktail menu for another round.

Somewhat later, we lurched back to our hotel where we dined on marlin steaks and white wine, before brushing our teeth alongside the enormous spider under the sink, and falling into a welcome sleep.

Sitting on the patio next morning, a Sunday, drinking our own coffee and munching fresh mango, we watched as white-clad locals streamed toward the many churches that line the street. Samoan church music played on the hotel stereo. As we waited for the kayak guy to show (again), I nibbled at a beautifully crafted “Chinese biscuit” that I’d bought the day before, which looked temptingly like a light pastry flower, but turned out to taste largely of onions.

At ten o’clock, we gave up on the guy again, checked out, and wandered back to the Green Turtle, because we knew that they had his phone number. It turned out that he’d completely forgotten about us, and promised to come and meet us in a couple of hours. Meanwhile, a little strapped for cash after our night of colonial cocktails, we ambled the few hundred metres into town.

All the churches were packed. Not only were the large cathedrals full, but the little buildings between them, which I had vaguely supposed to be community centres or offices, were apparently all churches too. In addition, a huge beach fale on the seafront boomed a heavily amplified bass line, and as we got closer, we realised that this, too, was full of people singing. Almost the whole town population was in church. The only people to be seen, scattered lightly under trees and reading on park benches, were Apia’s presumably transient Caucasian population.

The heat beat down. I had chosen to wear a lavalava, the ubiquitous sarong, which proved to be very cool and practical, and a rasher shirt as a defence against sunburn. It was an odd look, but the weather was devilishly hot. Eventually we swallowed our pride and returned to the swishing fans of Aggie Grays, where we ate quiche, and sandwiches with the crusts cut off, with cups of coffee and tea, to the sound of gentle jazz music.

Island time was kicking in. The kayak guy arrived.

Pumpkin Festival

The town of Collector, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, is home to some 150 souls. The closest landmark of interest is Lake George. Although the lake covers some sixty square miles, and was once mistaken by an early explorer for the Pacific Ocean, it is more often than not completely devoid of water. Due to a little-understood geological process, it is in the habit of suddenly filling and draining without warning. For much of the time, then, the lake bottom is used as grazing land for cattle.

The towns only story of historical significance relates the tale of a long-running feud between two families of settlers, a litany of drunken brawls, stolen sheep, and overnight stays in jail. So when the good burghers of Collector decided to try to raise the profile of their town, they had precious little to go on. However, one resident, recently returned from a holiday in Europe, had attended a pumpkin festival there, and he had enjoyed himself so much that he suggested at a Collector council meeting that they should follow suit. Disregarding the inconvenient facts that not only had Collector never grown pumpkins before, but also that the area was in a permanent state of semi-drought, the council concurred, and the first Collector Pumpkin Festival was born. Through luck and hard work, and probably because all such efforts appeal to the Australian psyche (this is a country where boat races are held in dry gorges, and people will drive hundreds of kilometres to see a large concrete sheep, or a monument to a dog that crapped in its owners lunch box), it proved to be a great success, and has been held annually ever since.

At the festival, all the food is yellow. There is pumpkin soup, and hot dogs in pumpkin bread rolls, steak sandwiches ditto. Local restaurants set up tents and vie to sell the most exotic pumpkin recipe; I particularly remember being served a complete braised ox tail with a pumpkin and chilli sauce. Hundreds of people mill around the tents, sampling the foods and sipping beers, admiring the produce on display, and listening to the local band which is playing in the background, occasionally breaking off to heckle particular members of the audience, Alongside the stage, a man tends an enormous wooden still, from which he is dispensing, of all things, small bottles of lavender water. Nearby, Queensland pumpkin sellers, who must have travelled for days to get here, hawk the blue pumpkins for which they are famous.

On either side of the roadway, lines of pumpkins are mounted on crossed stakes; there is a prize for best-dressed pumpkin, and anybody can just pick a pumpkin and enter, using either the box of random fabric scraps or anything that they might have brought along.

Finally, a nearby barn is reserved for the serious business of judging. Clearly, villagers and nearby farmers been scrupulously tending to their pumpkins for quite some time, because there are all manner of squashes on display, ranging from the downright enormous to the very small, through a whole gamut of other categories such as best carved and strangest shaped. While some judge, others admire or (if they happen to be children), climb all over the exhibits.

Kosciuzco Dawn

At just after two in the morning, the hotel lobby started to fill with bleary-eyed people. A dozen or so wanderers had signed up with a guide who was to take us to the top of Mt Kosciuzco (or Kosciusco, both spellings are historically valid), Australia’s highest mountain, in time to watch the dawn.

The continent of Australia is geologically old, and thus its tallest mountain is correspondingly weathered and not particularly high; only 2200 metres above sea level, and since it rises from an already elevated plateau, and since the hotel is itself high enough to service the ski fields in the winter, you can see that this impressive-sounding feat in reality only comprises a few hours of upward clamber. Nevertheless, climbing a continent’s highest mountain looks good on any traveller’s CV, so we were keen to add it to ours.

There was a little initial confusion as the guide loaded us all down with enough gear to equip a small army, and then we all packed into an elderly land cruiser bus which made its bumpy way up to the level of the snow fields via a mud track underneath the main chairlift. We were wedged like sardines and the windows instantly fogged with perspiration, so we couldn’t really see anything apart from the swaying bob of headlights in the tree tops until we came to a halt on relatively level ground, and the driver flung open the doors. The temperature instantly dropped as a biting knife-edge wind howled into the bus, and we scuttled into the shelter of a nearby wooden barn. There was no actual snow on the ground, but it felt like there should have been.

Wrapped now in scarves, and suited against the persistent wind, we emerged onto the path to the summit, headlamps pointing the way along the suspended steel pathway which protects the fragile soil and its botanically interesting ecology from the tramping feet of tourists.

The path has been in existence for many years, and has been religiously repaired when necessary, but although it is a tremendous boon for the plant life in the area, it does pose something of a problem for trekkers. It is cunningly designed from rectangular grids, welded together on steel supports, so that at any time you are walking somewhere between a few centimetres and as much as a metre above the ground. Plants grow freely beneath it, and water falls through it. You are close enough to examine the plant life, but not close enough to damage it, and even though steel is pretty slippery in the wet, the designers added a small serrated edge to each cross piece for traction; all in all it was a tremendous idea.

Sadly, however, the people who installed it managed to weld every grid sideways to its intended orientation. This means that the path is viciously slippery in the direction of travel, and when you inevitably fall, the serrated edges (which now run parallel to your course) neatly dice your hands and knees. On a cold winters night before dawn, the grid is a little slippery. Suitably forewarned by our guide, we walked carefully.

The guide himself was a chatty soul, but he had this obsession with rest stops. Frankly the icy wind was cutting through our clothing, and all we really wanted to do was keep moving, but we kept finding ourselves sitting off to one side of the path on a patch of boulders, nibbling chocolate bars and watching the clouds scudding in front of the moon. Would the sky clear for the sunrise?

About an hour and a half later, we were setting a good pace along the slippery path, and the guide made us all slow down. There was plenty of time, he said, and at the moment we were somewhat protected by the sides of the valley. We wouldn’t want to wait too long on the cold summit.

Half an hour later we got to the end of the valley and indeed of the metal path, emerging into the open. The final peak of Mt Kosciuzco rose to our left, a bare rock path spiralling up around it. The guide called another break. Two of the party ignored him and continued up the hill. I wondered vaguely where they were off to. A bit sick of snack bars by now, the rest of us milled around and waited for the guide under the lightening sky… lightening sky! Dawn had come already, and we hadn’t got to the top yet.

Cursing the incessant snack breaks, a few of us started running. The spiral path took us around the western side of the mountain, occluding the eastern sky, so for half of the circuit we had no idea whether we would get to the top in time. Then suddenly we emerged on the summit; we’d missed the first few lights of dawn, but thankfully the clouds were still changing second by second, and we huddled under a rock to watch; in that respect the guide had been spot on, the freezing wind was howling over the exposed mountain top.

The display was well worth it. We huddled together for warmth and sipped Baileys-enlivened hot drinks while admiring the constantly changing cloud colours.

Gradually the sun hauled itself up over the horizon, the sky turned from black to blue, the mist boiling off the plains far below. Behind us, over the back of the mountain, another beautiful vista unfolded. Not to be outdone, the moon shone over the blue-shaded mountains of the Kosciuzco range.

Climbing the Franz Josef Glacier

Blackwater Rafting

We just happened to be on New Zealand North Island, where we had been Blackwater Rafting. This is a variation on Whitewater Rafting, and entails poking your bottom through an inflatable rubber ring, chucking yourself into a nearby river, and allowing it to swirl you underground down a dark hole.

Apart from being entertaining in itself, the main point is to see the glow-worms which make their home in the cavern roofs. The worms, encased in silken cocoons, emit a ghostly green light as they try to attract food in the form of newly hatched insects flying up from the water below. As you drift along in complete darkness, rubber ring bouncing harmlessly off the occasional rock, a stunningly beautiful constellation of green stars passes by overhead. It is weird, it is wonderful, and it is thoroughly to be recommended.

North Island to South Island by train

Once back out into the outside world, we towelled off and decided to climb the Franz Josef glacier. Not only was this on the other side of the country, it was on the other island and several days travel away. Nevertheless, from Auckland at the northern end of North Island it is possible to catch a train to Wellington on the southern tip.

From Wellington you can catch a ferry to Picton at the northern tip of South Island.

From Picton you can take another train to Christchurch on the east coast, followed by yet another train (the Tranzalpine) clear across the country to Greymouth in the west, and finally a bus to Franz Josef. Since these trains between them comprise some of the most beautiful scenic railways in the southern hemisphere, we weren’t too upset about it.

Franz Josef

At lunch time, we stopped at a roadside cafe that sold Possum Pie (In Australia, possums are cute furry animals; in NZ, they are introduced vermin and have a nice rich flavour), we arrived in the little backpacker town of Franz Josef. With something of the air of a cheap ski town, it is a place to party, but not a place to dwell on the millions of tonnes of ice set to roll over the town if the climate changes.

After a celebratory beer or two, we dropped off to sleep in our slightly dodgy hotel, unsure of what the morrow might bring. In fact, the dawn light saw us trudging through light drizzle up the terminal moraine of the eponymous glacier. As we walked, our guides split the group of fifty into more manageable segments of ten; our own guide was a chatty little Kiwi called Imogen.

We crunched up the classic U-shaped valley, the footing strewn with the ground-up pebbles of millennia of ice erosion. Slowly we approached the enormous tongue of glacier towered above us, filling the valley from side to side, and high above we could see tiny ant figures perched on the face, chopping away with large axes.

These people, we were told, had already been chipping for hours in the steady rain, making our path up to the surface. Every morning they make a stairway, and every night the glacier fills it in again. If you look very carefully at the picture of the face of the glacier (say about an inch from the bottom and an inch from the right), you can just about see one of these workers wearing a red jacket. Our group paused to put on our Ice Talonz, a kind of tourist crampon with a hinged centre that allows the leather boot of the wearer to flex more comfortably than with the professional climbing kind. Unfortunately, not just any leather boot will do; we had each been provided with a somewhat derelict pair of paratrooper boots, with gaping holes and ungainly repairs sewn up with string.

As somebody who had previous ice experience, I volunteered to be tail-end-Charlie for our group, and we set off up the icy stairway. We soon realised that the state of the boots was irrelevent; the Talonz were great. Halfway up, we were introduced to our ice axes, and then, as the rain stopped and the sun came out, we set off to explore our ice wonderland.

The going wasn’t especially hard for us, but the guides were certainly working up a sweat.They carried large double-ended picks with which they were continually swinging and chipping, grooming each ice-cut step to a standard that would – just – allow ten sets of Talonz to pass before it was completely destroyed. Behind me, bringing up the rear, the leader of the next group began the same laborious process for the ten people behind him. In this manner, all the groups slowly worked their way up the face of the glacier.

Once at the top of the initial ice cliff, the groups split up, each guide picking (and chipping) a different path onto the glacier proper. There certainly were a lot of routes to choose from. The surface of the glacier was crisscrossed with crevasses, sculpted ice peaks, ice walls, and ice caverns, with here and there a plank bridge to provide access to the next segment.

It would have been very, very easy to get lost, because at eye level you could only see a few metres before the next turn or junction; certainly the other groups quickly disappeared from view as we set off down our chosen cleft. The only sign of them was the distant chip-chip-chip of the ice axes, and the occasional flurry of static from the guides hand-held radios, as they checked in with each other and tried to ensure that groups did not meet in any narrow gully or halfway along some steep ice shelf.

At around lunchtime, we finished climbing to what seemed to be the summit, only to find ourselves on a pile of median moraine with views of the next few miles of glacier, an even more complex and tumbled labyrinth, dotted here and there with the occasional glimpse of one of the other parties as they wound their way in and out of the sculpted tunnels.

After lunch there was time for a quick foray into the tumbled masses above us, then we got stuck in to the long trek back down. And a long trek it was! As the five day groups and the several half-day groups converged on the only ice stair at the tongue, the narrow crevasses got very congested. The guides continually radioed back and forth, and even though most of the time we couldn’t see further than a few metres, it was clear that all the other groups were very close by. Occasionally two groups would meet, and would have to work out some kind of precedence.

Even though the stair-dressers had clearly been chipping all day, once we got there the ice was melting with a vengeance under the combined onslaught of a day’s sunshine and a glacier-full of tourists. The stairway was a cascading waterfall. Standing in running ice-water and waiting for Imogen to chop away yet another piece of rotten ice, cold seeping through our soaking woollen socks, we began to wish that the guides weren’t taking quite such good care of us and would let us take our chances; anything to take a few warming steps.

Of course, they were doing the right thing, especially once we started to see some of the frail and unfit people who had just come up for an evening stroll; some couldn’t manage to step from one rock to another (we wondered how they would ever cope over the snow bridges), and one guy was clumping across the fractured ice in Talonz with a video camera glued to his eye; absolutely crazy, as we were all clinging with both hands and full concentration to any available handhold.

Safe and sound at the bottom, we removed our Talonz and headed for warmth and beer. Of all the adventure trips that we have done in New Zealand, this is the one that really deserves the name. We were climbing in quite dangerous terrain, and the guides had to be – and were – very, very professional; no larking about here. Imogen told us that to have Franz Josef on her adventure-guiding CV was the most respected experience that she could have. We were not at all surprised.

Rotorua

The town of Rotorua straddles the geologically active fault-line that runs down through North Island New Zealand. Driving in, the first thing that we noticed was the heavy pall of steam that hung over it. The next thing that we noticed was the pungent sulphurous smell.

Our first stop was the Buried Village, inundated by mud in 1886 when the local volcano blew its top in a spectacular display of fire and storm. Up until then, the town had been a fashionable Victorian tourist spot because of the nearby pink and white terraces, now destroyed, and so the event was well recorded both by the local press and by the diaries of visiting Englishmen. Certainly there was enough fascinating detail to make an interesting museum, culminating in a walk among the now excavated buildings.

Possibly the highlight of the sunken village was its 40 metre hot waterfall, probably more spectacular than usual on our visit due to the continuous heavy rain.

The path to the fall was curious in that it was guarded by fierce signs warning of heart attacks and falling children, when in fact even with water cascading down the steps, it was just a gentle stroll which Bronwyn negotiated in flip-flops.

By the time we got back to the start, we were soaked through and quite cold, so it was just as well that we had booked ourselves into a hot mud bath and spa.

Hell’s Gate Thermal Valley

Hell’s Gate, in another part of Rotorua, is an area of volcanic mud pools. After a slightly dubious lunch in the tourist cafeteria, we ventured out into the continuing rain to explore the sights.

The different pools and features are packed side-by-side in a large field of mud and rock, with footpaths winding between them. Each has its own temperature, colour, and character, and many have stories associated with them. For instance, Hurutini was named after a Maori princess, victim of an abusive husband, who killed herself by jumping into it. Hell’s Gate itself is the largest boiling whirlpool in the country, of unknown depth and a constant 98C. The Inferno owes both its gunmetal colour and its superheated temperature to a suspension of graphite particles, and the Cooking Pool was once used by the local Maori as a kind of bain-marie.

We had already got used to the sulphurous smell that had assaulted us the day before, and as the wind and the rain picked up, we welcomed the occasional hot breeze that blew off one bubbling pool or the other.

The Mud Volcano had built a man-high cone around a fizzing crater.

The Steam Cliff boiled and, it is said, occasionally spits gouts of water several metres into the air (although it wasn’t doing that while we passed by). The twin pools Sodom and Gomorrah grumbled ominously to each other as we struggled past, cheap umbrella bending and blowing in the wind, often becoming more of a liability than an asset.

Hell’s Gate Spa and Mud Bath

We packed all our clothes into plastic boxes, and were shown by the cheery Maori attendant to our personal mud bath, screened off by rush matting walls. A rectangular hole in the ground contained hot water piped from the mud fields, and a thin layer of the mud itself. The attendant hosed in a bit of cold to bring the temperature down to a bearable level, and then we lazed around in the water and smothered each other in the silky mud.

It was very relaxing but also quite hot, so when our allotted twenty minutes was up, we willingly sluiced down with ice cold water from the hose.

From the bath, we went straight into the warm spa, which featured an almost scalding hot waterfall that was wonderful to lie under as we straightened the travel kinks out of our bodies.

This was a more public pool, and other people came and went until finally, reluctantly, we climbed out for a final shower, feeling all floppy and relaxed.

Before going into the spa, we had been warned to remove all silver jewellery, in case it got tarnished by the sulphur. That night, safely showered (and after removing an amazing amount of crystallised mineral from our hair), we put our rings back on. In the morning, we woke to the vivid stench of old pond water, and noticed that all the silver had gone completely black from the remaining residues in our skin.

Lady Knox Geyser

By means of some manipulation with old rags and soap, the Lady Knox Geyser is persuaded to erupt each morning at 10:15am. We actually got there at 10:45, in time to encounter streams of buses, cars and camper-vans coming in the opposite direction. However, when we got to the site itself, the geyser was still quite impressively erupting, with the added bonus that the surrounding wooden amphitheatre, built to hold hundreds of spectators, was almost empty.

Waimangu Volcanic Valley

In the spring of 1886, the area around Mount Tarawera was a popular tourist destination, due in the main to two spectacular geological features known respectively as the White and Yellow Terraces, a set of brightly coloured cliffs with steaming hot water pools and falls. There are many pictures of parasol-bearing ladies in crinoline dresses perambulating around on the rocks.
Then in June of that year, the mountain blew its top and ripped a fault line 16 kilometres long that destroyed the existing lake system, along with seven small villages and both terraces. When the magma hit the hydrothermal springs, the resultant explosion hurled rock, dust and and sand some 11 kilometres into the air, raining down in a boiling flood on the surrounding countryside. All life, both animal and vegetable, was destroyed in the cataclysm, so the riot of greenery seen today is all new growth.

Close to Frying Pan Lake, so called because of the crackling and bubbling sounds that it makes, the cataclysm briefly created the worlds biggest geyser, which played from 1900 to 1904, although nothing remains of it today.

Inferno Crater Lake is the largest geyser-like feature in the world, although the geyser itself cannot be seen because it plays at the bottom of the lake. However, its results are seen in the curious cyclical water level which follows a regular pattern over a period of about six weeks. The water is highly acidic, sometimes around pH 2.1, and at up to 30 metres deep and 80 centigrade, at which temperature it overflows to feed the hot water features further downstream.

One of these features is Warbrick Terrace. The colourful shallows are caused not only by crystallising minerals, but also by various red and green algae that colonise the pools.

At the far end of the walk, a boat was waiting to take us out onto Lake Rotomohana. After the 1886 eruption, the resultant crater slowly filled with rainwater until it covered an area twenty times that of the original lakes, with a water level 40 metres higher.

On the one hand, this enormous mass of water has covered over almost all of the interesting scars, so that much of the tour comprises we are now floating over the site of…. On the other hand, the captain gave us a fascinating history of the explosion and of the subsequent recovery of the flora and fauna.

Wai-O-Tapu

The Wai-O-Tapu thermal area covers some 18 square kilometres and is covered with collapsed craters, cold and boiling pools of mud and water, and steaming fumaroles. Its a pretty spectacular place, with all sorts of colours and formations, and over an hours worth of walking tracks between them.

Boiling Mud Pool

Finally, just before we left the region, we stopped at a mud pool by the side of the road. We sat on the fence and listened as it made satisfying cooking noises and burped large gouts of mud several feet into the air, all accompanied by the distinct smell of hot dog sausages.

A very curious part of the world indeed.

Lake Wakatipu

The TSS Earnslaw

Queenstown, New Zealand, sits at one end of the beautiful Lake Wakatipu. If you’ve ever seen a postcard of snow-capped mountains reflected in limpid New Zealand waters, then this is where it was probably taken. From our lakeside hotel room we could see the twin funnels of a steam ship, and after a few days of skiing, bungy jumping, rafting and lugeing (Queenstown has got to be the adventure sports capital of the world), we felt that we could do with a change of pace, so  we clambered up the gangplank to see what was going on.

As soon as we got inside we were greeted by the gorgeous smell of hot steam and hot oil, and we realised that we had entered another world. The enclosed decks consist of galleries around a light well that drops down through the centre of the ship, giving an unobstructed view of the two enormous steam engines, the furnaces, and the busy crew of engineers tending to the vessels every need.
In its heyday the Earnslaw ferried some eight hundred passengers at a time, but there seemed to be only a few dozen people aboard, so we had plenty of room to watch. The crew scurried around the engines, checking gauges and lubricating everything in sight with long-nosed oil cans, while stokers piled coal into the twin furnaces. Finally the oil cans were put away, the enormous brass indicator rang ‘Ahead’, and in a cloud of steam the two screw shafts began to move.

I was spellbound.As the Earnslaw accelerated up to thirteen knots, the ship was filled with the mighty rolling thump of the engines and the comforting deep rumble of the prop shafts. The stokers stepped up the pace; the Earnslaw burns a ton of coal every hour.

Up on deck, the scenery was just as beautiful, and in between mesmerised trips down to the steam room, we sat and watched the shore and snow-capped mountains slide by.

Walter Peak Country Farm

An hour or so into the cruise we paused at the Walter Peak High Country Farm, an old but still operating sheep station which also boasts a rather splendid colonial restaurant serviced each evening by the TSS Earnslaw herself. A few of us got off to be greeted by our guide, a shepherd, who took us on a tour and explained what life was like living on the station.

We were treated to a sheep dog demonstration by some of the older, now retired dogs, who were still fleet enough to give a very impressive display of crowd control in a small group of bewildered sheep.

We were then introduced to a few of the stations sidelines, in the form of deer and Scottish highland cattle, before retiring to the main house for cream tea.

The highlight of the farm tour was the shearing demonstration. After we had eaten we were taken to a large barn, to be greeted by the most appalling squealing sound, which turned out to be a couple of young orphan lambs. Don’t ever be misled that lambs bleat, they don’t, they shriek; but we found that they soon quieted down if you picked them up, and Brownyn had a fine time bottle feeding one of them as we settled down to watch the demo.

A couple of adult sheep were milling around at the back of the barn. The shepherd manhandled one of them towards us, and then flipped it onto its back, whereupon it instantly went limp, and from then on it didn’t seem to care one whit either for us or for anything that happened to it. Out came some electric clippers, and the animal was firmly but gently shaved. I had expected it to wriggle and fight, but it just lay there uncomplaining on its back as it was moved this way and that, and before long it stood naked before us.

The pelt was surprisingly greasy to the touch, and heavy with protective lanolin.

The shepherd had all sorts of tales to tell, particularly about the annual gathering where everybody in the homestead combs the hills with horses and dogs in order to flush all the sheep, which live wild all year round, back to the farm for shearing. In fact, the papers only recently had carried stories of a sheep dubbed ‘Shrek’ which had escaped detection for six years and whose coat, when finally sheared, weighed 26 kilos, enough to make twenty suits.

After the demonstration we wandered out of the barn, looking up at the forbidding steep hills and pondered on the hardiness of the shepherds who lived in this beautiful but lonely place.
Then a steam whistle blew from the lake. It was the Earnslaw, come to take us back to the modern world.

The Awesome Foursome

The phone rang while we were enjoying a well-earned post-ski beer at the Dux Deluxe brewpub in Queenstown, New Zealand. It was the guys from AJ Hackett, confirming our 134-metre bungy jump, highest jump in New Zealand and probably the world, and first of a series of adventure pursuits known locally as the Awesome Foursome.

Nevis High Wire Bungy

Early the following morning, we found ourselves bouncing around in a bus climbing up a rickety private track, past a number of unusual little beachcomber-style houses. Part of my stomach was complaining that a glass of water and some paracetamol do not make for a full and satisfying breakfast, while the rest was clenched in a knot of trepidation. It was even worse for Bronwyn, who doesn’t like heights at the best of times, resolutely trying not to look out of the window as the four wheel drive scrabbled along the cliff edge up into Shotover Gorge.
On our arrival at the top, we were confronted by a stationary cable car gondola slung out over the centre of the gorge. To get there, we stood on a little open tray and winched ourselves across. The guide had previously scrawled all our body weights on the back of our hands with permanent marker; at this point he explained that whoever had the biggest number, jumped first, with no exceptions.

Bronwyn glanced around at the handful of midgets and stick-men in the tray, and it didn’t really need a hurried variation on stone-paper-scissors to realise that, yes, she was going first.

In contrast to the young and joking staff that we had seen thus far, the man who greeted us at the gondola door was calm and precise and exuded confident experience, which is exactly what you need when he is about to cuff your ankles to a piece of elastic and throw you out of the window.

The first hurdle is to shuffle to the open door of the gondola and sit in a dentists chair with your feet up. Down to your side, the tiny ribbon of the Shotover River winds along 134 metres below. Each piece of equipment is carefully explained as it is strapped on, particularly the quick-release that allows you to sit up at the end of the jump, so that you are winched back up to the gondola by your waist rather than hanging by your ankles, which would probably be slightly disturbing.

A quick wave to the ever-watching cameras, and then, with your feet strapped firmly together, you shuffle out onto a metal plank stuck out over the ravine. This is by far the hardest part.
This is swiftly followed by the scariest part, which is when the guide throws a big soggy rope bag over the edge. As it drops, it gives your ankles a good sharp tug in the direction that you really, right now, don’t want to go.

Then everybody counts down, and…. you jump.

Once you jump, its such a long way down that initially there’s really no sensation of falling, just a feeling that there is a heck of a lot of wind. Its a lot like sky-diving in that respect. However, there comes a point when you realise that the ground is approaching very fast indeed and you don’t have a parachute, but then suddenly you’ve reached the end of the elastic and you’re shooting skyward, the cable car looms close, and then you’re heading back earthward again. Laughing.

At the top of the second bounce, you pull the rather neat trick ripcord, your ankles swing free, and you find yourself in a sitting position with views up and down the gorge as you are slowly winched back up to the gondola.

On the bus back down, Bronwyn gazed happily out of the windows at the view. Vertigo? What vertigo?

Shotover Jet Boat

Next up was the famous Jet Boat, which plies the rapids on another stretch of the Shotover river. First you climb into wet-weather gear, then you clamber aboard and hang on to the wonderfully heated safety rail as the pilot does his stuff.

Two huge Buick engines power a sixteen-seater speedboat with zero draught and a lunatic for a pilot, who takes great delight in ducking the nose of the craft just past sunken rocks and floating trees, sweeping the passengers merely inches away from overhanging rocks, and executing trademark 360 degree turns, while burning up and down the canyon above Queenstown.
It is extraordinarily exhilarating. The pilots train every day for three months before they’re allowed to take paying passengers, and its easy to see why as you duck under the next rock as the side of the canyon passes inches from your face in a spray-filled blur.

Helicopter up the Canyon

Removing our wet-weather gear, we climbed into wetsuits and boarded a bus out of town. Halfway up the hill, our helicopter was waiting, with white-water rafts rolled up and strapped to its skids. Donning ear-defenders, we clambered aboard.

The pilot didn’t hang about. He wasn’t simply flying us up the valley, he was going to have some fun on the way, so we skimmed along side-canyons and shot vertically out of gorges, swung around huge rock formations and slipped from side to side as we wound our way upstream.
We were all wearing headphones so that we could communicate with the pilot, and the hardest part was not screaming Whoooooooo!!! into the microphone whenever an unlikely stretch of horizon or river appeared in the windscreen.

All too soon, we reached our destination, a spit of gravel in the middle of the Shotover River. The equipment was quickly unloaded, and the chopper returned for another load. When it returned, it raised an enormous and painful cloud of sand and mica, and over the next hour as it ferried people and supplies onto the spit, we got used to hunkering down and closing our eyes as soon as we heard it hot-dogging down the mountainside.

White-water rafting down the Canyon

A petrol generator appeared miraculously from behind a rock, connected to a couple of leaf-blowers which were used to inflate the boats. Once all half-dozen rafts were judged to be firm enough, we were allocated first to a boat and then to a guide, who gave us a little tuition into the meaning of all the various commands that were about to be screamed at us.
Basically these could be reduced to “Paddle like hell!”, “Paddle like hell backwards!” and “Duck!!”. Then we all pushed off into the water to practice. Everybody in the boat of all ages and from all walks of life had to learn very quickly to work together, four to a side with the guide at the back, and then we were off down the first rapid, followed by a very large fit Maori in a surf kayak as support.

At first it was easy enough, and we skimmed down the canyon according to the screams of the guide, Left forward! Right backward! All forward! All stop! The rubber boat was very flexible, and the hardest thing was keeping your seat on the outer edge and your feet wedged under the rails in the middle as it twisted and spun downstream.

Before very long it became clear that some people really weren’t going to pull their weight, and on a particularly awkward corner surrounded by vertical cliffs of wet rock, one of the guys at the front (who was supposed to set the pace for the rest of us) lost the plot completely. The guy behind him stopped paddling, and we smacked bow-first into the wall.

There was a period of wet and dark as the boat folded like a clamshell, bow to stern, and when it opened up again I was the only person remaining on the right hand side. The guide’s paddle floated to the surface and I flung it back to her as she climbed back into the boat, and then it was All forward!! with four people paddling on the left side and only me balancing them on the right, as we went over the next cascade.

Somehow or other it all worked out and we reached the next area of relative calm without going over again. I credit this in some part to my long experience of white-water kayaking, but I was paddling like a maniac and was pretty tired out by the time we reached the safety of the next eddy and picked up two of the missing people.

Bronwyn, however, had completely disappeared. It transpired that she had been sucked under for quite some time before popping up near to the guy in the rescue kayak, who had directed her to some rocks from where she hitched a lift on another raft. It was a bit of a relief to see her clinging to the middle of the next boat as it spat out of the cascade and t-boned us.

The final stretch was relatively easy, but certainly entertaining. The river entered a horizontal bore which was part of an old mineshaft, and we all tucked our heads down as we drifted in the dark to the tiny circle of light below. Then suddenly we erupted into the sunlight and over a final cascade, paddling like furies, before lying back and enjoying the last gentle drift home.

Awesome, just as advertised.

In the Beginning

The Germ of an Idea

Way back before we were married, before we were even an item, Bronwyn and I were sitting in a bar somewhere idly discussing what it was that we wanted to do with our lives. We were both in good jobs and had, individually, achieved our childhood ambitions, including travelling around the world. We’d both left our native countries in the northern hemisphere, and were, at least temporarily, living in Australia. We had well-paid and flexible jobs that meant that we could go round the world as often as we liked, but it was somehow all too easy. Life consisted of hard work and fine dining, extreme sports and luxurious living. All perfect, but it was beginning to feel a bit hollow, so what next?

Somehow or other, out of the blue, one or the other of us came up with the idea of sailing around the world. This was almost completely ridiculous, as neither of us knew how to sail. But if it was something new and difficult that we were after, then this would certainly be a challenge. After a while, the conversation bogged down in our complete lack of knowledge or experience of things nautical, and we ordered some more beer and turned our attention to other topics.

The next day, unbeknownst to Bronwyn, I contacted my old mate David, who had been sailing small boats since we were boys, and asked his opinion on the practicality of buying a yacht and sailing around the world. Bear in mind that I hadn’t the faintest idea of what a yacht cost or how long it took to cross an ocean, nothing at all.

David was stunned. As a small boy, I once crewed on his racing dinghy in the Thames, showing no aptitude whatsoever.

To his credit, and after only a few stunned expostulations, David settled down and answered the questions. It turned out that I had hit pay dirt; he had once intended to go voyaging with his entire family, and still had the file containing all his research, in which he evaluated types of vessel, running costs, equipment and all the multitudinous host of other things that I had, until then, no idea that I had to consider. I added up some numbers on the back of an envelope, and emailed Bronwyn at her work, pointing out that it was, at least financially, feasible.

Things moved on. Bronwyn thought about my crazy plan, and suggested that, in actual fact, she would consider sailing around the world with me. One thought evidently led to another, and, some time later but back in that same bar where the crazy idea had started (for the record: The Phoenix, Canberra), she got down on her knees in the spilled beer and cigarette butts and proposed marriage.

Distinguishing the pointy end from the flat end

While planning the wedding, we looked into the little matter of learning to sail. Canberra, where we were living, is capital of a landlocked desert state several hours from the nearest coastline. The only water is in the artificial lake in the centre of the city. This happens to be the home of the Canberra Yacht Club, where for a small fee you can hire a dinghy or even enter your own (necessarily small – the lake is not very deep!) trailer yacht in the weekly twilight race. There is also a sailing school, which teaches you how to handle a dinghy. It turned out that, in a previous life, Bronwyn had done a little dinghy-racing in Lasers, and had in fact the previous year taken a refresher dinghy-sailing course at the Canberra Yacht Club. She had a word with Matt, who runs the course, and suddenly I was enrolled.

The course took me from “this is a mast, this is a sail” through to rigging a dinghy, and then off we went onto the water. Over the weeks of the course there was in fact very little wind, so we spent quite a lot of time circling the Captain Cook Memorial Fountain, which is an enormous man-made geyser and tourist attraction that fires up at regular intervals, launching an enormous spout high in the air above the city. As the water flies up and down, it generates an outward-blowing wind, such that it is possible to sail round and round it, and tack and gybe, and generally practice unless you get too far away, in which case you need to be towed back into the centre again.

The closer you get to the actual fountain, the stronger the wind, and when it was my turn to helm I kept on pushing the limit until I got so close that the water was pouring into the cockpit and onto my unfortunate crew. On one occasion, I got so close that I got caught in the suction of the underwater feeder pipes, and thus became the first person in history to actually crash into Australia’s premier national monument.

Curiously, that particular crew never sailed with me again. However, I did in fact receive my certificate of competency, and, when Bronwyn and I tentatively entered some twilight races, we recorded first a dismal last (which in our defence was down to a misunderstanding of the rules; in our class, we only needed to complete two circuits instead of the three that we actually did), and then, incredibly, a first in our class. Much of the credit for this goes to the realisation that the boat went much faster when Bronwyn was at the helm and I was the crew, and also perhaps to our habit of carefully discussing each manoeuvre before attempting it, so that we both knew exactly what was going to happen and why. (To get ahead of myself, this is something that we still do, and it seems to me that there would be a lot more happy sailing couples out there if there was less shouting and more discussion.)

Distinguishing the red and green rope from the green and red rope

A qualification in dinghy sailing wasn’t going to get us around the world. In Australia, the first step in big boat qualifications is the Competent Crew, so we enrolled on a course in Pittwater, which is a large estuarine sailing area north of Sydney. There were five students on board a Bavaria 38 with Tony, our pommie instructor, and over a weekend he drilled us in all the skills that would enable us to be crew rather than passengers on a large sailing vessel.

To Bronwyn, used to single-handed and two-man dinghies, the Bavaria was daunting, with its arrays of multicoloured ropes and pulleys and winches. To me, it was a lot more familiar. Even though I had not technically, sailed one, I had been on holidays on 45 and 50 foot Beneteaus, had hung out on a number of friends yachts, and had piloted narrowboats around the canals of England and Holland. At least I knew what most of the things were for, even though I had no idea how to use them. Bronwyn, on the other hand, was quite capable of sailing her, but had no idea which ropes to pull to make it happen.

Slowly, patiently, Tony – recently returned from a record-breaking attempt of circumnavigation of the south polar seas – instructed us in the art of making a large expensive piece of fibreglass move through the water without hitting anything, all the while regaling us with tales of subzero storms and weeks without hot food. Slowly we got the hang of it, although one girl was completely hung up on the rules of the road; “Who’s got right of way?” she would scream, freezing at the helm, whenever a sail appeared on the horizon. With turn and turn about, however, the rest of us got comfortable with helming and crewing, and managed some halfway competent man-overboard exercises. Suddenly we weren’t complete passengers, suddenly we felt that, if we were on a yacht and the skipper suddenly fainted, we could at least manoeuvre the vessel without sinking it.

At the end of the course, Bronwyn and I got an impromptu tour of the Arctos, the vessel that Tony had so recently crewed. The Bavaria is, even in the charter version that we were using, a luxury yacht with no expense spared to make it look like the inside of a Hollywood Captains cabin. The purpose-built Arctos certainly gave us a taste of the other end of the spectrum. With its plain white-painted interior, single potty toilet and cramped webbing bunks, the interior cried sweat and adrenalin and testosterone, and on the outside, every fitting was twice or three times the normal size, speaking volumes of the sheer destructive power of the seas that it had had to navigate.

Impressed, but shuddering, we struck the Antarctic off our list of sailing destinations.

All dressed up with no place to go

At the end of the weekend, proudly brandishing our certificates, we pondered the reality of our situation. We were now, at least on paper, competent crewmen. However, we knew that in fact we were far from competent, but the only way that we were going to improve was to gain some experience, and we couldn’t get experience without chartering a yacht, and nobody would let us take their boat out with only a Competent Crew certificate. It was time to move up to Inshore Skipper.

Tasmania: A tale of three corners

I had always wanted to go to Tasmania. As a child, I would take my globe, put my finger on my home town of London, and then spin it around until I found the farthest possible spot away. Strictly speaking, this would put me in New Zealand, but I also had a collection of old maps and atlases which filled that area with sea monsters and “here be dragons”, a notional outline of the Australian coast, and a peculiar little dot right at the bottom labelled “Van Diemens Land”, sometimes marked by a small devil with a pitchfork. Tasmania was, to me then and for much of my life, the far ends of the earth.

Of course, from my new home Australia, it is just one of the States that make up this nation, and but a small hop by aeroplane from my current house in Canberra, so when Patrick and Helga turned up from Holland one month, I mentioned my Tasmania story to Bronwyn, and she said, “I’ve always wanted to go there too. Lets surprise them.”

Launceston

That morning, we whisked the bemused couple down to Canberra airport with the vague promise that we were taking them to “somewhere interesting”. The first flight was to Melbourne, and we kept tight hold of the onward tickets, but as it happened when we arrived at the transfer gate, all the sign said was “Launceston”. Patrick and Helga were still saying “Where the hell is Launceston?” when the plane left the tarmac and they suddenly realised that there was probably a map in the in-flight magazine…

From the air, Launceston looked a lot like the green fields of England, a somewhat welcome sight after our home town of Canberra’s worst-drought-for-fifty-years look. Once on the ground at the tiny airport, I waited in line at the rental car counter as the smiling clerk explained to the couple in front that the clause you must not drive on unsurfaced roads simply meant “…and when you do, don’t tell us about it.” When he took me to see my own vehicle, he explained away the scratches on the door as “the usual marks you make when trying to put the key in when you’re drunk,” and advised me not to worry too much about damage “because its only a rental car”.

After this interesting introduction to the Tasmanian psyche, we drove to our nearby hotel, and enquired about food. The receptionist looked aghast. “At ten at night? This is Tasmania, you know…”

However, we did end up grabbing some fast food, and headed over to The Lounge Bar, the only pub that everybody seemed to recommend. After a door-check for steel toecaps we were allowed into a cavernous old hotel ballroom with comfy sofas where we could sit with endless four-pint jugs of Carlton and observe as the girls danced to the rather decent cover band, and the blokes stood and watched, or – more often than not – stared glassily at the cricket on the TV over the bar.

One of the defining geological features of Launceston is its gorge, and after breakfast net morning we took a beautiful walk via a winding path and some suspension bridges to an old hydro power station, stopping on the way to watch spiny echidnas and cicadas doing their thing. The water was pretty darn cold, but Patrick went for a dip anyway.

Rosevears Estate

Hungry, now, we headed up into the hills above Launceston, knowing that the area was packed with vineyards and hoping to get some food. According to our guide book, only one – Rosevears – did lunches, so we were a little disappointed to roll up and be told that sorry, lunch was over. We must have looked a bit forlorn, because they offered to bring out some “nibbles”, which turned out to be a couple of enormous platters of excellent seafood, salads, meats, fruits and cheeses, washed down by ample tastings of their excellent wines. In fact, the wine-tasting was going so well that we thought it would be a good idea to ask if the small row of cabins that overlooked the valley were available for rent.

The waitress, somewhat flustered, said that they had only just been built and weren’t really supposed to be available yet, but we were welcome to rent them if we wanted. Heartened, we returned to the food and wine. It was a minute or so before we realised that the waitress was still standing somewhat awkwardly by the table. Nervously she blurted, “but you haven’t asked me how much they cost!”
“Don’t worry”, we assured her, “everything will be fine, and can we have another bottle of this excellent wine?”

Some time later, we ambled up to our cabins, to discover that each was a beautifully crafted cube of beech and glass, decorated inside in semi-Japanese style, and featuring a fully stocked wine cabinet and an enormous bath with views over the vineyard and the lake. Stupendous, sumptuous and beautiful.

After a nap and bottle of Pinot Noir on the verandah, we ambled gently back down to the restaurant for dinner, where our waiter Ken kept us entertained and supplied with excellent food and wine, after which we repaired to the starlit balcony for a Pinot Noir nightcap.

Breakfast arrived, red-riding-hood style, in a covered basket on the doorstep. Sitting in the bath, feeding each other grapes as the sun rose over the vines, we never wanted to leave. However, eventually we all climbed back into the car and set off to Strahan.

ABT Wilderness Railway

Tasmania being vaguely triangular, and – at least on the map – not very big, we had thought that we’d spend a few days in each corner. There’s a steam train that runs from Strahan to Queenstown that we were intending to catch, so we picked what seemed to be the most direct route and set off, Patrick at the wheel because it was Bronwyn and my turn in the back. However, the road soon revealed itself to be an endless stream of mountain switchbacks, and the over-soft suspension of the big Mazda SUV soon had us feeling pretty sick. Thankfully a local store hove into view, and Bronwyn stumbled in to buy us some motion sickness tablets. They didn’t have any, but the owner took one look at Bronwyn’s face and gave her a handful from her own handbag. We were looking so green that Patrick and Helga volunteered to sit in the back, so I settled down to drive.

As corner followed corner it became clear that we would never reach Strahan in time, and that instead we would have to try to catch the train in Queenstown. I stepped up the pace a bit, and the tyres began to squeal as we tore over the final pass and headed back down the endless switchback down into town. Suddenly the mobile reception, which had been dead all over the bush-filled centre plateau, sprang into life, and Patrick was shouting over the sound of screaming rubber as he tried to get them to hold the train for just another few minutes, and yes of course we wanted first class tickets, as I floored it and drifted sideways down the tiny mountain road, finally pulling up beside the train in a triumphant cloud of burning rubber.

Then suddenly we entered another age, a lovingly restored Premier Class train carriage with a wooden viewing balcony and Julie, our laughing conductress, welcoming us aboard with a glass of champagne. We settled back into the seats as the old locomotive whistled and chuffed gently out of the station.

The train used to haul copper ore from the mountains down to the town for processing, and the track was hacked through the rainforest, occasionally criss-crossing the heavily poisoned vividly yellow river over high wooden viaducts. Now the train carries tourists on a beautiful journey through the enormous ferns and palms, the river no less vividly yellow, but forming a beautiful counterpoint to the lush green of the recovering bush. I’m not sure how the they fared in Tourist Class, but for us the trip was lubricated with as much wine as we could drink, and an endless supply of snacks and fruit and cheeses, dotted all the while with Julie’s tales and jokes.

Eventually, however, it had to come to an end. The steam locomotive was pushed around on a turntable and coupled to another set of carriages travelling in the opposite direction, and a less exotic engine took us down to the bus back to Queenstown.

Everybody we’d spoken to had said that if we were staying in Queenstown, then we should stay at the Imperial, which turned out to be a wonderful colonial structure of carved dark wood, stained glass and sweeping staircases, and of course a bar.

Bonarong Wildlife Sanctuary

The next morning, the plan was to drive to Hobart, third apex of the Tasmanian triangle and southernmost point of Australia. It was Patrick’s turn to drive, so off we set up that same vertiginous switchback that I had so precipitously descended. The tyres started to scream again… and unfortunately we overcooked it on a bend and slammed sideways into the rock wall. Ouch. Luckily one of the wheels took most of the damage, so we changed that and kept going, and although the transmission was crunching quite alarmingly, we reckoned we would probably get there in one piece.

Finally we rolled into Hobart, once more surprised by how long it took to drive anywhere. Just outside the city is Bonarong Wildlife Sanctuary, a zoo that specialises in Tasmanian Devils. They have loads of them, and despite their fearsome reputation, they look really, really cute. In common with most Australian zoos, you are encouraged to feed the animals (although not the Devils, which despite their innocuous looks would be unlikely to give your hand back), and we had a fine time feeding the roos and emus.

Climbing in Launceston Gorge

We had hoped to do some climbing in Hobart, but they weren’t able to take us on short notice, so we booked a session back in Launceston, climbed back into the car and headed northwards, back to the gorge where it all started. There we met Bob from Tasmanian Adventures, who took us for a very enjoyable clamber in the sunshine.

Finally, tired and happy, we returned to that first Launceston hotel for a last night of excellent Tasmanian beer, tall tales, and dreadful games of pool.

Climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge

On an otherwise normal day at the office, Bronwyn filled in a company profile questionnaire for the in-house magazine. Among the usual questions was “What would be your perfect first date?”. Her answer was, to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

This triggered off some intra-office discussion on how she could find anybody crazy enough to do this with her, and of course as soon as I heard about it, I booked it.
It was a three hour drive to Sydney after work on a Friday, so we found ourselves a nice hotel and had a gentle night on The Rocks, a particularly happening area on the Sydney Harbour waterfront. Then, after a decent late morning breakfast, we headed for the Bridge itself.

The worlds largest and widest steel arch bridge, it still dominates the Sydney skyline seventy years after it was built. Its 49-metre deck is wide enough for eight vehicle lanes, two train lines, a cycle path and a pedestrian walkway, and the top span, at 134 metres above sea level, was our destination that sunny morning.

Our hosts, the Bridge Climb Company, turned out to be a very slick operation indeed. In their warehouse-sized office inside one of the minor approach support towers, we climbed into our bridge-grey jumpsuits and fitted our safety harnesses, which were cleverly designed to run along a continuous safety rail on the bridge.

Add some sun protection, radio headsets (bone-conduction: a weird feeling), some safety instruction, a final set of metal detectors to ensure we weren’t about to drop coins or cameras on the traffic below, and we were out onto the approach span.


Out onto the body of the bridge itself, we were walking up and along the outer spans above the water. The views were tremendous, from the Blue Mountains on one side to the ocean on the other, and down onto the rooves of downtown Sydney and of the Opera House itself.


The whole tour, led by a knowledgeable guide and punctuated by the occasional historical titbit, bad joke, and photo shoot took over three hours, walking all the way up the seaward span to the very top of the bridge, across beneath the flags and aircraft warning lights, and then down the other side back to base.

Surprisingly tired, we divested ourselves of our gear, bought the photographs that you see here, and stumbled out into the late afternoon in search of coffee, before driving to the coast to go scuba diving.

Narooma

Overland to Narooma

Teun and Loes had managed to get hold of a holiday home for the weekend, down on the eastern coast of Australia near to Eden.

It was possible to get there from our home in Canberra by road, but it was also possible to draw a straight line diagonally across the map and travel through the bush, so of course this is what we did. Loes’ sister Nienke happened to be in Australia at the time, and at the last minute she decided that rather than travel in the back of the characterful but somewhat uncomfortable Wahoo, she would hitch a ride in our slightly more comfortable Nissan.

It is a good many hours of off-road driving from here to there, and we convinced Nienke that it would be a great idea to learn to drive the truck, since in Holland all the cars are tiny. She ended up having a lot of fun, and although on a couple of mountain passes Bronwyn and I were wondering whether the nearside wheels were actually hanging over the edge, we thought it best not to mention it until later that evening.

Eventually after a long day in the bush, we arrived in Narooma, finding the house to be an enormous property with a verandah looking out over the sea. We soon got down to some beer and food and some serious partying, some time next day on the beach, local seafood – including the famous Moreton Bay Bugs which taste fabulous but which look like nothing on this planet.

Whale Safari

Next morning it was time to head down to the beach to board the Whale Safari. When we arrived, though, the operators were looking pretty glum. The early voyage had come back empty-handed, and the signs were that the whales had moved on. We’d still see seals, they said, but they were more than happy to refund our money if we wanted to cancel, because they reckoned we only had about a 10-15% chance of seeing anything bigger.

Never mind, we boarded anyway. The boat was going to take us to Montague Island, a local tourist attraction, and look for whales on the way, so we thought we’d go along for the ride.

Once out of the fierce harbour exit, it was a pleasant summer’s day cruise, although Nienke was looking a little green from the motion. Then, suddenly, a humpback whale surfaced, and within moments we realised that we were right in the middle of an entire pod, all apparently delighted to see the boat. We were then treated to nearly an hour of the whole gamut of whale behaviour: showing heads, showing tails, breaching, tail diving, swimming upside down, diving under the boat, and generally having a pretty wild time. The boat operators were ecstatic, they said they’d never seen a display like it. Then a second pod turned up to join in the fun.

I did take quite a few pictures, some of which grace this page, but really I spent most of the time staring at them in wonder. I’ve been on whale safaris before, seeing Sperm and Minke Whales in Norway, and Blue and Beluga Whales in Canada, but I’d never before seen them playing around and having such a great time, just like enormous dolphins.

Seals at Montague Island

Eventually it was time to move on, to nearby Montague Island, home to generations of lighthouse keepers and also to a thriving seal colony. They lay like huge sacks of lard over the sun-baked rocks, bulls guarding their harems and staring haughtily as our boat chugged by, pups off to the side on their own rocks, looking incredibly cute but stinking of stale urine, wet fur, and rancid fish.

To finish off the evening, we sat and watched as the islands colony of little penguins waddled up the beach, a much smaller and more intimate display than the huge tourist attraction at Phillip Island. I can’t show you any photos here, because they are startled by camera flashes, but suffice it to say that watching them climb out of the surf and amble up to their nests is always an edifying and somewhat comical experience.

Home through Kosciuzco

All too soon it was time for the long drive home, but our wildlife experience wasn’t yet over. Partway up a bush track we came across a goanna, a huge lizard, rooting about in an old log.

Somehow or other we got separated from the Wahoo, which wasn’t carrying a radio, so we decided to drop down to Cooma for a bite to eat before getting thoroughly lost in the dark while attempting a short cut through the Kosciusko National Park, finishing off the holiday in unseasonal rain with an entertaining slide around through muddy dark outback farms, avoiding randomly scattered white goods which looked suspiciously as though they contained the body parts of the last visitor, while trying to simultaneously get off private land defended by Keep Out Or Else signs, dark and sinister deserted buildings, and once the suspended body of a dead kangaroo, in an attempt to find the national capital.

My attempts at entertaining the girls with a selection of late-night horror stories didn’t seem to go down enormously well, and Bronwyn and I got very wet climbing in and out of the car opening and closing gates as we worked our way across the bush. All in all, I doubt that Nienke will forget this trip for quite some time.

Mungo Desert

Five in the morning, pitch black, nothing stirring in Canberra apart from a mismatched pair of four-wheel drive vehicles heading purposefully westwards into the Australian outback. Although we’d travelled quite widely in New South Wales, the south-eastern corner of the island continent, it is all comparatively lush, and we were keen on seeing some of this famous outback desert that wed been hearing about. However, the nearest example was about a thousand kilometres to the west, and although my modern air-conditioned Nissan could do it in comfort, Teun and Loes were in their twenty-year old Land Cruiser, the Wahoo, so we had to take it gently.

After climbing out of the vaguely hilly bowl that forms the Australian Capital Territory, we rolled down to the flatlands of the Murrumbidgee River and the town of Narandera. Every small town in Australia struggles to be the home of some unique feature, whether it be the biggest merino sheep in the world (made of concrete, in Goulburn), or the biggest trout in the world (made of fibreglass, in Adaminiby), or the oldest continually licenced premises in Australia (one of at least three similar claims that we have found, this one in Berrima). Narandera is no different. As we turned onto the arrow-straight Sturt Highway, road signs sternly admonished us that we had missed the opportunity to see The Largest Playable Guitar In The World.

We were the only vehicles on the highway. Ahead of me, all I could see were the dull red tail-lights of the Wahoo, and a bright blue backlight on Teun’s dashboard, which appeared somewhat bizarrely to be a GPS navigation system. I made a note to ask him about it later.

Dawn rose in the rear view mirror. The night slowly faded to grey and then fled into the usual gorgeous blue of another perfect Australian day. The occasional trees on the horizon became shorter and stubbier, the earth by the side of the road became noticeably redder, starkly contrasting with the green of the grass being grazed by the thin and hardy Australian sheep.

The road continued on, and on, ever westward, past another sign proudly proclaiming that we were driving through The Best Wheat-Growing Country in Australia. Back in lofty Canberra, the days had been getting mild, even a bit chilly, but out here on the plains we started slathering on the lotion as the morning sun scorched through the open sunroof.

Six hours in, I needed a coffee, so we pulled over in Hay, pretty much the only town on this part of the Sturt, and stoked up on the things that we thought we needed; several pints of caffeine, some baling wire, a roll of gaffer tape, and a spade. Remembering the glow of the Wahoo’s navigation computer, I asked Teun for a demonstration. He looked somewhat sheepish as he showed me the screen. He’d forgotten to load in the map for this part of Australia, so the screen showed a huge featureless field of blue with a small “you are here” cursor flashing in the centre, and far far off at the bottom of the screen, a little dot that said “Melbourne”.

Actually, back on the Sturt, driving across the endless red terrain, that felt about right. Emus wobbled humorously by the side of the road. Hours passed. Finally we arrived in Balranald, the last fuel station before the Mungo and the point at which we finally left the Sturt and headed north.

Exactly 53km up the road toward Ivanhoe, according to the directions we’d found on the web, we turned left onto a sandy track. Loes compared it to Africa; beaten sand, low scrub, and emus running here and there in the bush. I gave the Nissan its head, hammering down the trail at 140kph, blowing away the cobwebs of the miles and miles of tarmac, finally arriving by the public lodges in the Mungo National Park. According to a sign on the door, in order to get the key we had to telephone the Parks office. When I called them, I got an answering machine; the office was closed.

On, then, to the camp site, which had an honesty box system for the pitch, and another one for firewood. We had no tents as such, but we’d come prepared to sleep in the vehicles if necessary. While Loes unloaded the Wahoo’s excellent cooking range and rustled up a meal, the rest of us cracked some welcome beers and got on with some vehicle maintenance. One of my tyres was running a bit bald and needed replacing, and Teun needed to pump diesel out of his second fuel tank because it didn’t seem to be properly connected.

A superb dinner, then a fire, more beer, wine, laughs. It was the first time I’d burned Eucalyptus gum, and I was impressed. The bark makes excellent tinder, and the wood itself is incredibly dense, lights easily, burns hot but slow with no smoke or spitting, and then settles down to perfect red embers.

A comfortable night in the cars, then up with the birds – particularly the cheeky Apostle birds which had their noisy beaks in everything – and onto the circular track around the Mungo National Park.

First stop, the amazing Walls Of China, an enormous lunette dune stretching from horizon to horizon and moving slowly across the outback at several metres per year. At its leading edge, it slowly smothers the scrubby bushland. At the other end, thousands of years later, it spits out all the things it has consumed; kangaroo bones, the remains of aboriginal fires, the odd artefact. As it moves, it carries with it a population of contorted Bluebush whose roots hold it together as the wind sculpts and ripples its upper surface.

A wedge-tailed eagle soared above as we took the cars up a small track over one end of the dune, stopping to wander through the extensive complex of beautifully carved gullies formed by the heavy water erosion of the hard-packed sand.

Beyond the dune is the Mallee, an area of unusual multi-stemmed eucalypts indicative of the most dry and barren conditions. There was, however, still plenty of life to see, from the beautiful emerald green Mallee Ringneck parrot to the myriad red and grey kangaroos hopping over the red red earth under the startingly clear blue sky, pausing now and again to stare at the metal interlopers into their domain.

The mallee part of the national park is just as interesting as the lunette, home to specially adapted birds, lizards and plants, particularly the rather astounding Porcupine Grass, probably the sharpest and most uncomfortable ground cover in the world. It is dotted with huts and tanks left over from various attempts at grazing the arid land, including the interesting Round Tank, which had been completely fenced in with a small access ramp leading to a steep drop down to the water; in fact it was a trap for wild goats, a pest in this area, which could jump down to the water but which could not then get out again. A scattering of skulls were testimony to the efficacy of the system.

Finally, as the end of the weekend drew near, it was time to head back to Canberra. Before we left, we climbed up to the Mungo Lookout, where the full extent of the bluebush scrub was visible from horizon to horizon, all the more astounding because when the settlers, who were the source of all the abandoned buildings and sheep stations that we had seen, were trying to make a living here, all this was just a huge lake.

Benighted at Kalang Falls

Having recently become addicted to the peculiarly Australian sport of “canyoning”, I jumped at the chance of a midwinter abseil down the Kalang Falls. Situated in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park in the Blue Mountains near to Sydney, the falls drop for a vertical distance of about half a kilometre into a deep canyon, after which you have little choice but to clamber the same distance back up along the aptly named Murdering Gully.

Thus it was that early one Saturday morning, a group of Kanangras black cattle, waiting patiently for the first dawn rays of the sun to evaporate the frost from their backs, were surprised to see nine enterprising adventurers heading out into the still darkened wilderness. Led by the highly experienced duo of Andy and Andrew, we planned to tackle the eleven abseils of up to sixty metres each, and then begin the three-hour scramble up Murdering Gully in the fading afternoon light, finishing up back at the top by mid-evening, hopefully still in posession of an eclectic selection of silly hats.

The sun lifted gorgeously above the canyon as we clambered to the head of the falls and began our first descent.

The falls drop in a series of steps, with enough room on one side or the other to abseil without actually getting wet; a so-called dry canyon, handy for tackling in the middle of the winter without the need for wetsuits and swimming. No problems with the cold here, however; soon we were stripping off the early-morning layers, chattering happily and basking in the sunshine during the inevitable waits for the ropes to become free.

On the third drop, we couldn’t find the anchor point. It soon became clear that an earlier landslide had changed the shape of the canyon, and it took an impromptu food break, some precarious hopping from rock to rock, and a good deal of sliding through uncertainly shifting underbrush before, about an hour later, we eventually found it and could continue down to the visitor’s book which was bolted to the cliff. The previous entry was about one month before.

The day progressed down a series of drops, giving fabulous views across the Kanangra-Boyd to the matching cliffs on the other side, and down to the sunny green treetops far, far below. Presumably in order to keep us entertained, Steve, who seems to have a remarkeable affinity to water, took the occasional impromptu bath.

As the day wore on, and we sometimes found it necessary to descend on only one rope instead of two at a time, it became clear that what with the landslip and everything we were going slower than expected and would have to do Murdering Gully in the dark.

Not to worry, though, we had come well equipped with torches and extra snacks, and we still had our cool-weather gear from the frosty morning, so we expected to emerge at perhaps nine oclock in the evening. Then one of the ropes got snarled, and by the time we’d untangled it, we had three more abseils to do and dusk was already falling.

Out came the head-torches, ranging from the positively ancient to futuristic hi-tec, except for Cath who had to borrow a hand-held maglite. Never mind, Cath, I said as I duct-taped it to her wrist. For the rest of the descent, she loomed periodically out of the darkness like a cyborg.

The head torches introduced another problem; what to do with Andys hat. This enormous wicker lampshade affair, all the way from Thailand, had bounced and scraped its way this far down, had been periodically retrieved and repaired, and now we had to find some way to carry it. Maria saved the day, volunteering to have it strapped to her pack, which gave her an interesting ninja turtle profile. The show went on.

The penultimate drop is, at sixty metres, the longest possible single abseil in the Blue Mountains. Well prepared, of course, we were actually carrying a sixty-metre rope rather than the usual fifty, which made it a bit easier, but we were also doing it in pitch darkness, which made it… interesting. I can absolutely recommend abseiling by starlight down the side of a waterfall. Suspended in space, I kicked out to bounce off a rockface invisible but for the small circle of light from my headtorch. Pausing halfway, and looking up toward the sky-spanning crystal arm of the Milky Way, I could see a pinprick of light that was Andrew far above, and turning my head, another pinprick of light far below that was Andy. All else was pitch darkness, apart from off to one side, the eery white thundering glow of the waterfall. Marvellous, just marvellous.

To commemorate the moment, as each climber reached the bottom, Andy solemnly handed them a lighted sparkler.

Finding the last pitch in the dark was nigh-on impossible. For a long time, most of us huddled on a rock ledge in the trees while search parties ranged through the forest below, little flickers of light appearing and disappearing between the steeply sloping trees. Time passed. We weren’t going to get out of Murder Gully until midnight. We thought about Lyn, waiting patiently at the top with the cars, and expecting us out by nine at the latest. There’s no mobile coverage out in the bush, but she had a car and sleeping gear, so we knew she was OK and hoped she wouldnt worry. Then finally, a triumphant call; the route had been found, but there had been another landslide, requiring the construction of a rope safety rail to clip onto as we crossed the rubble-strewn and uncertain slope, mere feet from the edge of the steep drop into the falls, before shimmying down a knotted rope and back onto the trail.

The last drop is entertaining. If you just abseil straight down, you end up floating in the deep plunge pool at the bottom of the falls; not ideal. What you have to do is get nearly to the bottom and then, shrouded in the thundering spray as the Kalang falls finally touch bottom, you have to swing and hop yourself round a big slippery outcrop, fighting against the weight of fifty metres of wet rope above you, onto a mossy little ledge. By torchlight. And, in Allans case, with a twisted ankle. But we all managed to stay dry; apart from Steve, of course, but he was getting used to that by now. Now for the strenuous but simple clamber out of the gully, and home to the waiting caravans.

It was not to be. It was, as I may have mentioned, seriously dark. We were at the bottom of a half-kilometre deep canyon, thickly surrounded by gum trees. Bush paths are always precarious things, it is hard to tell which are made by humans, and which by roos and wombats, but we figured we were heading in roughly the right direction – ie, upward – and so started to climb.

The going was tough, sloping at about forty-five degrees, and deeply littered with fallen leaves and branches. I was scouting ahead, following whichever of the many crisscrossing trails seemed to be heading most upward, and was beginning to get a little disillusioned when I found some taped markers on some trees. Hoorah! We were saved!

We climbed onward. Murdering Gully is supposed to take only a few hours at worst, so we should have been about to reach the main trail soon. Hours passed. We climbed. Midnight ticked by. The slope steepened. We climbed.

At one o’clock in the morning, we gave up. Clearly, markers notwithstanding, we were on the wrong ridge, but how to tell which was the correct one? We’d have to wait until morning. Australians have a word for this: we were benighted.

Tired but cheerful, we squatted on the 45 degree slope, passed around muesli bars and considered our situation. We were in dense bush without camping gear, but we had plenty of food and water, and enough spare clothes to go round for those who needed them. Despite the fact that it was midwinter, we didn’t expect the temperatures to drop much below zero. Our main concern was not for ourselves, but for the people waiting for us back in civilisation; Lyn in the car at the top, and Andrews wife in Sydney, who was expecting a were back call. An expedition into the bush is not to be treated lightly, and we had followed usual practice in leaving our itinery and instructions to alert the emergency services if we didnt make it back. One or both of the girls would certainly call the rangers if we didn’t show up by morning, and we didn’t want to cause an unnecessary furore. Still, there was nothing we could do about it, so we wedged a few fallen trees across some stumps to stop us sliding downward, and variously huddled together in a pile, or strapped ourselves to comfortable-looking trees, and dropped off to sleep.

Before very long, the sun came up, and we lit a small fire and took stock of where we were. Or rather, we tried to; even in daylight it wasn’t really clear where we’d gone wrong the night before, and as we munched our way through breakfast we contemplated the unsavoury idea of climbing all the way back down to the valley floor, and starting up again.

At this point we started hearing cooo-eees of rangers on the cliffs high above; clearly one of the girls had sounded the alarm, and our fire had been spotted. Before very long, two SES Rangers turned up to see if we were OK.

They seemed a little put out to find a cheerful, well-equipped group eating breakfast; we suspected that they’d been looking forward to an exciting spot of rescuing, but they bustled about anyway strapping up Allan’s ankle and handing out chocolate bars. They made an amusing pair, Matt a big cheerful guy who knew everything about the Kanangra-Boyd and imparted that knowledge accompanied by heavy swearing, and Ewan, younger and wiry, who seemed to have a personal ambition to carry the heaviest load out of Murdering Gully; he stuffed his pack with our spare ropes and fleeces, and would have been delighted to carry all our packs if we’d let him. Apparently he was locally famous for once lugging a car tyre all the way up to the top.

Most importantly, they knew the short cut out, which involved a bit of a traverse through the bush, but thankfully no downhill backtracking. As we walked, the pair regaled us somewhat wistfully with stories of the idiots they had rescued and the bodies they had carried out, admitting now that they would much rather that we’d been trapped halfway down the falls so that they could have done a bit of abseiling themselves.

Murdering Gully was a steep climb even in the winter sun, and we really appreciated a pause at a cave with a freshwater spring (we’d used most of our drinking water that morning to make sure that our fire was really extinguished; one thing the bush really does not need is more fires), and then, finally, we all climbed back up to the outside world.

It wasn’t quite what we’d expected…

A second truckload of rangers had set up an urn with tea and biscuits, and Lyn had brought a load of meat pies and sausage rolls, which was nice. However, we were also greeted by a brace of ambulances, a policeman, and a TV crew. Disregarding our somewhat amused protestations that we were all fine and had merely been caught out by nightfall, the TV crew homed in on Allan, now decked out with a nice big photogenic ankle bandage, and I guess it was a slow day because he ended up on the Sydney news.

Thanks to Andy and Andrew for guiding us, to the ladies who worried at the top, and to the whole crew for being so buoyantly cheerful in what were occasionally adverse conditions. In addition, its nice to know that if we had really been in trouble, then there are all these dedicated, professional and above all cheerful people willing to give up their time to help. Thanks, then, to Matt, Ewan and the other SES rangers and emergency services at Kanangra-Boyd.

Parachute into Canberra

It started, as these things so often do, with a chance meeting in a bar. Mike, who was sitting next to me, happened to mention that he was part of the Australian free fall team, one thing led to another and without too much more ado I found myself clambering into a jumpsuit at Canberra airport. Next to me was Lyn, who to everybody’s surprise – particularly her own – had decided to jump too; an interesting decision for somebody who has trouble looking down over the edge of a kerb.

First came a couple of exercises, demonstrating the positions that we should adopt while plummeting from the heavens.

Low level practice session

Then six of us – Lyn and myself, our two tandem instructors, the pilot and Bruce the cameraman – piled into the tiny aeroplane and headed for the wide blue yonder.

This plane has no door!
This plane has no door!

The single-prop plane clawed slowly for altitude. Canberra drifted away into the distance, revealing the harsh bush land beyond. Little green tempered the raw rock and earth, and from our vantage point the sun reflected off the only water; the glittering snake of the Murrumbidgee River, and the tiny rainwater dams hacked from the land by generations of sheep-farmers. From ground level, the bush seems lush. From the air, you see it as it really is, hard-baked and dry.

It was loud in the little plane, and we were packed in like sardines, shifting occasionally to ease sleeping limbs, but it was a beautiful day and we were gently lulled by the land dropping slowly away. Suddenly Graham, my instructor, poked his altimeter over my shoulder so that I could see it. “Four and a half thousand feet,” he said. “This is where the parachute opens. Everything above this is free fall.” I nodded, and looked down through the clear piece of perspex that constituted the door. It didn’t seem so very far down.

The plane clambered higher. Some time later, we turned round and headed back to Canberra, still climbing. We had clearance to jump from ten thousand feet, and we were due to land on the cricket oval by the Australian Mint. The earth continued to drop away. And then, suddenly, we were there.

Canberra from 10,000 feet
Canberra from 10,000 feet

Lyn was due to go first, and had been psyching herself up, doing breathing exercises, preparing for the moment when she had to confront her worst nightmare; voluntarily jumping from an enormous height. She was calm, calm, calm, and ready for anything… until they slid open the perspex door, and an icy wind howled through the tiny cockpit. Lyn screamed and screamed. We managed to get her wedged into the doorway, and then while her instructor shuffled his legs underneath to get a purchase, we peeled her fingers off the airframe, and she was off. The scream trailed away…

Can you hear her yet?
Can you hear her yet?

Bruce the cameraman was already clinging to the fuselage. I was next. Laughing like a madman, I was launched out into the clear blue sky.

Jump1
Jump2
Jump3
Jump4
Jump5
Falling
Falling

The feeling of speed was astounding. Somehow I had not really thought about just how windy dropping at terminal velocity was going to be. Even so, above the howl of the wind, I could faintly hear Lyn screaming as she plummeted away below me. Bruce, with helmet cam attached, arrived in front of us, filming. I tried to explain how fantastic it all was, but it was impossible to talk against the blast of the air and anyway I couldn’t stop laughing.

Freefall1
Freefall2
Freefall3
Still falling
Still falling

Some thirty seconds and around five thousand feet after leaving the aircraft, Grahame pulled the ripcord. I had expected a violent tug when the parachute opened, but in actual fact the only real sign that something had happened was that Bruce and the camera abruptly vanished. And then… from manic howling madness to gentle floating peace, drifting like thistledown above the bush city and Lake Burley Griffin. Gently we twisted and turned, coasting slowly lower, until eventually we could make out the green cricket ovals, and finally the watchers waiting beneath.

The landing was quiet and serene; we simply lifted our legs up and slid along on our backsides, and the ride was over.

Again! Again!
Again! Again!

And Lyn? She had screamed for the whole free fall, and was hoarse for days afterward. Would she do it again? Absolutely.

Phillip Island

Phillip Island, situated in the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Tasmania, was clearly settled by people from the Isle of Wight in England. Approximately the same shape, it boasts the Wight towns Cowes, Rhyll and Ventnor, and even tails off into a crescent of rocks where The Needles would be, only because these are rather more stumpy, they are here known as The Nobbies. It is also something of a retirement and tourist resort; in short, it’s pretty much a perfect match.

None of these facts figured among the reasons why we chose to go there on Easter weekend. Newly arrived in Australia, we wanted to see these famous Australian animals that every schoolchild learns about, and Phillip Island is not only home to a number of native Australian animal sanctuaries, but also has an unrivalled position as a fertile piece of coastline poking out into what is effectively the Southern Ocean, thus attracting a number of creatures that you would perhaps be more likely to expect to find in the Antarctic. Its also a convenient days drive away from Canberra, and, if you ignore the highway, you can take an entertaining 4WD route through Kosciuszko National Park.

After an exhilarating nine-hour drive into Melbourne, we stopped at a convenient hotel and went out to check the local night life. A bar with a pool table caught our attention, and before long we’d met any number of local people, staggering eventually back to our beds in the small hours of the morning.

A few hours later, fortified by immensely strong coffee, a pile of fried food, and hiding behind dark glasses, we set off once more for the southern coast.

There is a stretch of toll road that takes you through Melbourne, but there are no toll booths. Officious signs warn you regularly that Your Car Has Been Photographed, and If You Have Not Paid Then You Will Be Fined, but there was no way of actually purchasing a toll ticket.

Eventually we saw a sign that said Ring This Number For Queries, so I called it on my mobile. I explained to the nice young man that I was a stupid tourist from Canberra and that I was driving on his motorway without a permit, and he told me that I could pay by credit card. There followed a selection of voice-activated automated instructions, number of credit card, registration number etc – how the hell are you supposed to do this while simultaneously driving on the motorway – after which I was dumped into Please Wait For Operator Assistance. The same man came back on, and said laconically, Oh yeah, the automated system doesn’t recognise out-of-state number plates. And this in one of Victoria’s premier tourist regions…

Our hotel turned out to be a typical leisure complex fronting onto the beach, with buckets and spades, frisbees and sandcastles. After a restorative bite to eat, we headed off to the koala sanctuary.

Koala

Now, everybody knows what a koala is supposed to look like, a kind of sleepy cuddly teddy bear, right? So, obviously, the real thing must be completely different. Er, no. A koala genuinely is a sleepy cuddly teddy bear.

Their chosen foodstuff, the eucalyptus leaf, is so indigestible that they spend several hours stuffing themselves, and then a load more hours just sitting there asleep, waiting for their stomachs to get enough energy out to enable them to wake up and stuff themselves some more. Its a pretty sedentary life, which means that each morning the sanctuary staff can go out into the forest, and underneath each koala high up in its tree, place a sign that says “Here’s One!”, secure in the knowledge that its unlikely to move very far in the coming day.

We also saw a load more classic Australian animals…

Penguin

In the evening, it was time for the Penguin Parade. Every night at dusk, a colony of Little Penguins, who have been out all day chasing fish in the Southern Ocean, swim back to their rookery on Phillip Island.

In order to get from the safety of the water to the safety of their dune burrows, however, they have to cross an open expanse of beach, and this is where a stepped auditorium has been constructed so that the public can sit quietly and watch.

It really is an amazing and extremely amusing sight. The birds swim lithely into the shallows, and then attempt to struggle to their feet. Bearing in mind that they can’t use their short flippers to aid them, this is something of an effort, and since they don’t dare go out onto the sand – where a predator may be waiting – they do it in the waves, using the momentum for one wave to stand them up, only for the next one to knock them down again. More and more penguins gather in little clumps, appearing in flashes of white and then tumbling like dominoes, making occasional forays onto the shore but always chickening out and running back into the waves, until suddenly a group will seem to get a quorum and all head up the beach together in a purposeful waddle. Although it really is comical, their persistence is awe inspiring.

The influx lasts for hours, and if you follow the birds up into the dunes, you can see them determinedly heading up through the dunes, pedalling their little bodies through the undergrowth, and issuing plaintive little brrrrp? noises and then listening for a reply in an attempt to find their mates and their nests. To think that they go through this every night!

Seal Rocks

The following day, we caught a boat out beyond The Nobbies to Seal Rocks. It was a pleasant ride, with the crew telling tales of the local people, and rich kids on sea-doos buzzing in our wake. In the distance we could see the Rocks sticking out of the sea. “You can’t see them,” said the nearest crew member, “but I can see about ten thousand seals right now.”

He wasn’t kidding. When we got closer, we realised that what we’d thought was rock was practically all occupied by seal, and all around were more seals playing in the waves, swimming out and then surfing in on their bellies, leaping out of the waves in gay abandon. The boat was an instant hit, too. Around us, the sea boiled with eager brown faces, a veritable seal soup. I’ve seen seals before, but never like this.

French Island

There was an agricultural show on neighbouring French Island, so we spent some time admiring the working horses there.

Back on Phillip, we took a stroll down to The Nobbies to see the sunset.

Overland to Eden

Having just bought a shiny new 4WD, it seemed rude not to take it out somewhere. Up until now, we had been using hire cars which restricted us to the state of Australian Capital Territory. Since the ACT is only about 50km across, we had found this somewhat limiting; now, with our very own vehicle, we could venture into neighbouring New South Wales. Hurrah!

The plan was to set out after work from Canberra in an easterly direction until we hit the sea, then to follow the coast southward for an unspecified distance before turning back inland and then finally north back up to Canberra, a long weekend’s rectangular journey in the south-eastern corner of New South Wales (and indeed of Australia).

Once out onto the Kings Highway, just across the state border, we encountered our first examples of Australian Sign Humour: enormous billboards for a Bungedore turf grower stating such gems as “Our Grass is Legal”, and “The Secret of a Good Root is in the Bedding”. Onward, though, to the coast.

Batemans Bay

Batemans Bay is, frankly, a tourist and retirement resort. It does, however, occupy a lovely stretch of coastline, and is home not only to a huge fleet of pelicans, but also to a particularly good fish and chip shop. Positioned on stilts in the waters of the bay itself, the shop has mooring for its own fishing trawler at one end, a central curtained area where the fish are gutted and prepared, and a scattering of tables and a door to dry land and passing customers at the other. It is difficult to see how you can buy fish that are any fresher. The blackboard tells you what they caught that morning, and whatever it is, it can get battered and fried. As poms accustomed to cod and chips, we were a little surprised to find battered yellow-fin tuna on the menu; and very succulent it was indeed.

However, night was falling, and we needed somewhere to stay. A little way down the coast was the town of Moruya, and after checking into a convenient motel, we ventured out to see what it had to offer. The answer, it appeared, was very little. It was only early evening, but everything was closed, apart from a couple of pubs and a Chinese restaurant. Undaunted, we popped in for a nice meal washed down with decent Australian wine, and headed back to the motel.

The whole of that eastern seaboard is littered with National Parks. Not only do the enormous Morton, Budawang, Dua and Wadbilliga parks form a thick green belt some thirty kilometres inland, but also the actual coastline itself is almost all protected environment. Once heavily logged, the government has tried very hard to maintain these fertile forests, criss-crossed by numerous dirt tracks leading apparently to nowhere but suddenly emerging onto spectacular headlands or winding their way between the enormous trees themselves.

We spent the day bouncing randomly along these tracks, never knowing where we were going but always sure that the next view would be as wondrous as the last, passing names steeped in probably forgotten history: Potato Point, Mystery Bay, Disaster Bay; until finally we fetched up in Bega.

Bega

We’d figured that since Bega was quite a large town with some local industry, there might be a little more in the way of nightlife. However, after hopefully walking up and down the main drag a few times, we came to realise that there were only a couple of pubs and no restaurant at all. One of the pubs, however, advertised food, so we wandered in and found that along with our pints we could order some pretty decent Chinese cooking, so we sat down and tucked in.

The meal was very nice, but after a while we realised that the eatery was already closing, and we had now exhausted the cultural delights of Bega. Another beer, and out into the outside world.

An enormous electric storm blew up. Great sheets of lightning hurled themselves across the darkened skies. Forks set out in three directions at once from a single locus, pounding into cloud-heads and into the ground. We stood in the motel car park, awestruck. You really don’t get storms like this in Europe, especially without any rain.

Eden and the Whaling Museum

In the morning, with dark clouds still louring overhead, we headed on down the coast until, topping a rise, we were confronted by golden columns of sunlight pouring through a ragged tear in the cloud layer, illuminating the little town of Eden. Immediately we could see how it got its name. We were in the middle of one of Australia’s worst droughts, but here all was a promised land of lush and green. Apart from the heat, we could have been in the original South Wales rather than its eponymous antipodean counterpart – although, to be sure, there is some historical doubt whether Cook, who named the area, had ever actually visited Wales. I like to think, though, that there was a Welshman in his crew who looked out and saw a vision of home.

Eden was once considered as a suitable site for Australia’s capital city, in a move to restart its then moribund economy. For some fifty years it had enjoyed the status of Australia’s premier whaling centre, almost the country’s sole source of whale meat and products until the coming of offshore factory ships and a decrease in the need for whale products.

The families that ran the whaling operations were greatly dependent on a pack of local killer whales. These orcas would round up other whales and herd them into the bay. Then their leader, Old Tom, would leap up and down in the water outside the whalers lookout, until the men noticed and got their boats out and rowed with their harpoons to the luckless prey. Occasionally in his excitement, Old Tom would despair of the whalers’ slow rowing speed, and would grab hold of the painter and tow them out.

Then, once the target had been harpooned and killed, the whalers would buoy it and leave it overnight. Old Tom and his pod would just take the lips and tongue, and leave everything else for the men in the morning.

Eventually Old Tom died, and a local landowner built a museum to house his skeleton. This museum has grown somewhat organically into a fascinating exhibition accommodating everything from whaling to local tree-felling to stories of the sea, but the central piece is still Old Tom himself. If you look at his teeth, you can clearly see where they have been worn away by pulling on the harpooners’ tow ropes.

Australia's Strangest Shipwreck Saga
A story from the Eden archives, confirmed by Lloyds of London.

On the 16th October 1829, the schooner Mermaid left Sydney bound for Western Australia. Four days later, while lying becalmed in the Torres Straits, an unexpected gale blew her onto reefs bursting her hull. The twenty-two people aboard were marooned on some rocks for three days until rescued by the barque Swiftsure.

Five days later, the Swiftsure was caught in a strong current off New Guinea and was wrecked on rocks. All hands, including those rescued from the Mermaid, made it to land. Eight hours later they were all rescued by the schooner Governor Ready, which was already carrying 32 people but which managed to cram the other two crews aboard.

Within three hours, the timber cargo caught fire and the combined crews took to the lifeboats. The cutter Comet picked them all up without loss of life.

A week later, the Comet ran into a squall that snapped her mast. Her crew took the only serviceable boat, leaving the formerly rescued crews, who they regarded as being jinxed, to their fate. For eighteen hours the survivors fought off sharks as they clung to the wrecked ship, but they all survived to be rescued by the packet Jupiter.

By a strange coincidence, a passenger on this last ship was an elderly lady from Yorkshire who was on her way to Australia to seek her son who'd been missing for fifteen years. She found him amongst the survivors - he was a crewman from the Mermaid, the first of the vessels wrecked.

Cooma

Westwards, then, into the setting sun, along a dirt track connecting to the Monaro Highway, and then northward to Cooma, a mere hop skip and a jump from the southernmost borders of ACT. A little sensitive to the fact that most of the towns we were passing could justly be described as one-horse, and a little tired of Chinese food, we’d set on Cooma as our destination because it is a major tourist area in the ski season. Surely here there would be some night-life. There was, in fact, a tourist centre, and we went in and explained our plight.

The woman scratched her head. A restaurant? She took us outside, and pointed at the building next door, indisputably a restaurant, but just as indisputably closed. She shrugged.

Perhaps one of the motels did food? We took directions to the largest, parked in relief under the huge RESTAURANT OPEN sign, and checked in. When could we eat? we asked. The young Canadian girl (“I married an Australian so I could move to Sydney, and we ended up in this godforsaken place”) shook her head. Their restaurant was closed. She rang around some of the other motels, but no, their restaurants were all closed too. Then she brightened. “If you cross the road, over by the ski shop, in a few moments the Chinese will be open. Best restaurant in town.”

Canberra

Arrival in Canberra

Many moons ago, the Australians decided that their newly formed Federation of States needed a proper capital. The individual state capitals – Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart – fought long and hard for the privilege, until everybody got fed up with the bickering and decided to put the capital somewhere else.

A few sites were considered, but in the end the Australians took a patch of unremarkable sheep-farming land spanning the borders of New South Wales and Victoria, and made a new state, Australian Capital Territory, in which to build their new city. After some more in-fighting, during which committee-generated names such as SydMelAdPerBrisHo were suggested, the city was named Canberra.

The architect, something of a visionary called Burley-Griffin (or possibly his wife, but that’s another story), knew from the start that this city was going to be different. Rather than clear-fell and sterilise the area before putting up the buildings, he decided to insert the city into the bush itself. A lake was required as a focal point in this waterless wilderness, so he created not one but two by the judicious use of dams. Seven separate centres were built scattered about the new lakes, each with their own shopping malls, business zones and housing. Building plots were sold with the understanding that, once you’d built your property, the government would stock the garden with mature local trees and shrubs, and much of the land between the centres was designated as national parkland, forming huge stretches of green-belt wilderness criss-crossed only by cycle paths.

On our arrival some fifty years later, it was clear that the vision was still working. One of the first things any visitor should do is drive to the top of nearby Mount Ainslie, and look down over central Canberra. In front of you, you see the lake, the two parliament buildings – the old and the new – with the famous flagpole standing above them, and off to one side, a small cluster of office buildings that constitutes the centre of Civic. Everything else is bush and trees. But wait, just stand and concentrate… amongst the trees you see a house. And then another one. And another. Until you realise that what at first glance seems to be forest horizon to horizon, is actually all the living, breathing city of Canberra.

We arrived by train from Sydney, on the basis that after twenty two hours (with only a one-hour break in Kuala Lumpur) on a plane from Holland, we couldn’t face even the local internal hop or another moment in an airport. It turned out to be an excellent decision, as well as an introduction to Australia in microcosm. Sitting in our air-conditioned first class seats, sipping local Chardonnay and dining on roast chicken, we soon found ourselves involved in numerous of conversations with passers by, interested to know who we were and what we were doing; imagine this happening on an intercity train in any European country.

Half way to Canberra, the train stopped unexpectedly. After about five minutes, the attendant (who up until now had mainly been saying things like “Next station is Wogga, population 12, the platform is very small and we are only stopping for two minutes, so please do not go wandering”) came on the tannoy to announce “We apologise for the fact that the train has stopped. The driver is now trying to restart the engine. When he succeeds we will be on our way…”

In the distance we could faintly hear the grind of an enormous diesel turning over; we could almost picture the driver standing on the track, winding a huge starting handle. Meanwhile, nobody so much as glanced at their watch or frowned. Conversations continued without interruption, and when the engine eventually shuddered into life and the train restarted its journey, nobody thought it worthy of comment.

Our arrival in the capital city was surreal. It was built to house a million souls, and so far only about 350,000 have moved in, so there is practically no traffic on the huge 3-lane highways, no public transport to speak of, and only one taxi company. Canberra International Airport is an airstrip borrowed from the air force, and when we arrived at the train station, it was like something out of a Western; a simple platform, baking heat, and nothing at all moving. All it needed was eerie harmonica music and a bouncing tumbleweed.

What traffic there is in Canberra, is mainly utes, what other cultures would call a flatbed or a pick-up. However, no bashed about working vehicles these. It is the dream of every young lad to own a ute, with darkened windows, pearlescent paint job, wide alloy wheels and a thundering exhaust. In fact, Ford and Holden (the local name for Vauxhall/Opel/GM) make hot utes just for this market, great for cruising in the evenings but not enormously useful for actually carrying stuff to market. For a moment I toyed with the idea of owning one myself, cruising across the red desert with arm on window ledge, stereo blaring… but then I realised that the other main vehicle here is the four wheel drive, somewhat more practical for the intense touring that we intend to do, and so off we went looking for a twin-cab Toyota Land Cruiser.

However, in a dusty corner of the Toyota dealership they had a part-exchanged Nissan Pathfinder, with electric everything, CD player, aircon, and for two thirds the price… after a test drive, I fell in love with it.

After the bush fires

Once you’ve got yourself a set of wheels, it is only an hour or so from Canberra up into the Snowy Mountains, which (like much of the ACT) is mainly national parkland. Much of it is natural bush, but great swathes of it were until recently experimental plantations of imported pine. These famously exploded into a firestorm shortly before our arrival, wiping out around four hundred houses in one of the outlying suburbs, and forests as far as the eye can see.

The pine plantations are all dead, mile upon mile of burnt sticks projecting from crumbly scorched earth, eerily silent apart from the buzz of flies around the occasional charcoaled animal corpse.

The local flora, on the other hand, is well adjusted to regular burning. Without an oily carpet of pine needles to keep the heat in, the earth below the native forest is unscarred, still healthy and brown, and heat-triggered seeds, dormant for years, spring into life to take advantage of the cleared growing conditions.

Native grasses burn back to a central nub, but soon sprout a short green felting of fresh tips. Up in the highlands, a ranger shows us a banksia, which has stubbornly refused to flower for the last fifteen years, covered in new buds triggered by the heat of the fire that has turned the surrounding limestone ash-white.

The ubiquitous eucalypt’s flaky bark burns but then peels off, revealing fresh wood beneath, and hidden buds push their way through the charcoal, sprouting fresh and green against the black, all silhouetted against the stunning blue of the sky. So striking is this landscape – the 2003 firestorm notwithstanding, bush fires are a fact of life here – that I reckon that the Australian national colours should be black, green and blue.

Pine burns and is forever charcoal. In contrast, local plants such as this eucalypt pause for a week or so and then burst forth with new life.

Somewhere to live

After a few weeks in a hotel, we managed to find a house. The rental industry here is certainly interesting; each property is made available for viewing for a single hour. In that time, as many hopeful renters pack in as possible; afterward, you all fill in your application forms. These forms are then shortlisted according to how much the agent liked you (chatting them up works wonders here), and then – get this – the short list is sent to the actual owners, who get the last word. If they don’t like foreigners, or people with odd names, or whatever, then out you go. Whether you’re the best tenant in terms of past history or income level is at this point completely irrelevant. Very strange.

After going through the mill a couple of times, we rented privately, which made a lot more sense, and we ended up with this vast (by European standards) 4-bedroom house practically on the shores of Lake Gininderra, and a short cycle ride to work.

And what a cycle ride! To commute to my office, I cycle down a mud track to the lake, and then pedal around the shore, past the pelicans and cormorants, with parrots and cockatoos flying overhead, swerving to avoid bright blue swamp-hens, until I arrive at the office. How cool is that?

On the way home from work, I often meet Lyn by the lake-shore and we feed the pelicans, swans and ducks. You get a few scratches – they’re big creatures, and wild and excitable – but smart, the way most Australian bird life seems to be smart, and easily taught which bits are food and which bits need gentler treatment.

Back at the house, I built a bird feeding station, in an attempt to attract some wildlife, with extraordinary results; we regularly see twenty parrots, a dozen cockatoos, as many bronze-wings (sort of pigeon-like with dinosaur crests), magpies (big smart piebald birds), sundry smaller critters, and even a goshawk that catches prey and then nonchalantly plucks it on our lawn.

Australians often tell you that Canberra is boring. They are wrong.

No worries. No worries at all.