14th April - Upstart Bay - passport lost and found - dugong sighting

Sunday 14^th April

Happy birthday Pauline Shelley - recently inducted into the Tasmanian Honour Roll of Women - friend to many - mother of two equally resplendent women - grandmother of four.  Pauline told me once that a friend had told her, in turn, that when you turn fifty you have a great party, which lasts a week or so, then you wake up and you are sixty… The decades are rolling on…

Three photos today:

One: scenery.  We are anchored at Upstart Bay, 60 nautical miles from Townsville.  It is very beautiful.  A whole lot of geology going on in them there hills.  Not much biology… a few swallows, and more than a few lovely little yellow butterflies.  I have just been for a swim in what Pete assures me, very happily, is called Shark Bay.  I didn’t stay in very long…but the water was glorious.

Two: Pete happily ensconced on the couch with a book and a beer, and now a cup of tea to add to his joy.

Three: my passport.  Yes a strange theme for a photo…but you have NO IDEA how happy I am to be reunited with my passport.  I thought I had lost it, somewhere between Pete’s car WRX and Pete’s boat 2XS… All I could remember was finding it in its special resting place at Katy and Jeff’s, then putting it in the car, in a bag full of…something or another… No memory of it after that.  In my defence I was very VERY busy, with my head full of work/boat/farewells.  What I should have done was unload it very carefully and put it in its special resting place on the boat.  But…I didn’t.  And as soon as Pete had sailed on down the river on March 24^th, I started panicking.  All of my stress and anxiety focused on the one thing – WHERE WAS MY PASSPORT???  I had hideous nightmares about it, and sent Pete piteous textmessages asking him to search in every single unlikely place.  He did this, and he also asked Rachel to have her own seek & find mission.  No luck… I went about the task of gathering all of my documents to apply for a new one.  Not so easy, for a foreign-born person… Birth certificate, naturalisation papers, marriage and divorce certificates (to prove my changes of name.)  Within a few hours of being reunited with Pete on the boat, I started my own seek & find mission.  I had a sudden flash of memory – there was one bag missing.  The one with the stash of sewing cotton and needles Barbara had given me.  Find that and I was sure the problem would be solved.  Twenty seconds later – eureka!  There it was, a bag full of lovely sewing stuff, and the red pouch with my passport.  Stashed in a place Pete and Rachel hadn’t thought to look – under the bunk in the port aft cabin… Happy happy me!!!

Pete Attenborough Headlam, by the way, thinks he has seen another dugong.  He had been, until recently, what you might call a dugong denier.  Surely dugongs are mythical beasts, he said.  Until he saw one, off Magnetic Island last year.  And this time he is sure he glimpses one in Island Head Creek last week.  Wee hee!