Today I got an email from my friend Jutta, as follows…

Have read of your adventures on Cape Barron and thought about posting a wee warning. Hayden (Jutta’s son) is in the process of filling out an incident report following an attack by Cape Barron geese.

He was checking a bush/pasture property for valuation and was greeted at the gate by "normal" white honking geese. They made a bit of fuss and then left him to complete his job. Suddenly from around a building appeared two Cape Barron geese which delighted in attacking him. He escaped by hitting at them with his clipboard and once safely back in the car checked the damage to his very sore leg. He was left with a bleeding 6" gash and a long tear in his suit trousers. He feels a bit of a ninny having to write a report, but he needs to claim for losses. The story was related with much action and merriment.

Well golly and gosh…they look so very benign!

Ok so I had got as far as Trousers Point when I had to stop typing and go off for dinner at the tavern…

Steve took us to the golf club for a beer, on our way to his house in Whitemark. It was a very friendly, convivial sort of place. The licensee, a retired policeman (Tony Powell, I think,) had even more missing bits of finger than Pete. He had cruised in the Pacific Islands and had lots of stories to share, and lots of useful information for Pete to absorb. The only bit I listened to was about a domestic incident… They had sailed up from New Zealand, where it was very cold, and when they got to the Solomon Islands, they took all their washing to a laundromat. A cheery woman there said they should go off and enjoy themselves, and come back in a few hours; she would deal with all of the washing. When Tony came back he found his washing all clean and dry with a set of tiny little thermal leggings…the kindly laundress would never have encountered this sort of thermal material, which completely shrinks when it goes in the dryer…

Steve then took us to his house, in the main drag of Whitemark, where his lovely Margaret was preparing a delicious meal for us. We had: biscuits and cheese, a hearty home-made soup, stir-fry with prawns and lots of vegetables, then cake. The only problem was…she apologised for this meal! Apparently it wasn’t good enough; well you could have fooled us, we thought it was fabulous!

We took Steve’s car back to Trousers Point. He said, laconically, “Leave the keys in the ignition. Somebody might need to use the car.” Well I suppose if anyone did steal a car on Flinders Island they wouldn’t get very far… The next morning we were up early, and back into Whitemark to pick up Steve, who was very keen to give us a guided tour of this beautiful island. Margaret…well lovely Margaret stayed behind and did our washing, and dried it. She was very sorry that one of the towels was still a bit wet but…we forgave her! (We had quite a lot of washing because our bed had got very damp and musty and we had to strip it completely and dry the mattress in the sun, and wash all of the linen and lining etc. Pete has put a large slab of wood under the mattress now; it was just sitting on the metal floor of the boat, which is presumably why it had got so yucky so quickly. Here’s hoping!)

We went all over the island, with Steve telling us lots of interesting stuff about the farms, the history, the wildlife. He took us to Patriarch’s Reserve, which was set up by Margaret’s father, Derek Smith, a local naturalist. Apparently he was very concerned about the Cape Barron geese, which love to eat the lush, rich Flinders pasture. This makes them very unpopular with the farmers. So Derek got together some money to buy a large tract of land. He cleared a big paddock for the geese, built a little shrine to St Francis of Assisi (well we assumed it was St Francis; who else could it be, who more appropriate??) and surrounded it by a moat, and built a lovely little A-frame hut in the beautiful bush. This is available to anyone who wants to go and camp or picnic there. We cast a slightly dubious eye over the cleared land…not a Cape Barron goose to be seen…they are far more interested in the lush rich pasture…

We saw lots of big fat cows, rolly-polly sheep (it has been an exceptionally good season) and many birds. Pheasants, turkey, peacocks are feral on the island. They look very pretty but…maybe they shouldn’t be there… we also saw – blue native hens! Well, once again, golly and gosh! When I got back to 2XS I looked in my birdbook and found they are purple moorhens. They fill the same niche as our less spectacular Tasmanian native hens.

We had to be back in Whitemark in time for Margaret to take us to Trousers Point and to get herself to the hospital in Whitemark were she works as a nurse by 1.35. I had done a bit of sleuthing, to see if I could find my old schoolfriend, Barbara Hughes. She left Launceston High in 1964 so I thought it might be just a bit difficult to track her down. But actually…Flinders has a population of approximately 750 people… It took me less than thirty seconds to find her! I asked some people in the golf club, Greg and Fiona, if they knew how I should start looking. They are new to Flinders, working as nurses at the hospital. They said, “Yes ofcourse; Barbara Robinson! We know her! Here is a picture of her, and her husband, KR, on the wall!” I blinked a bit – how could it be so very easy?? Steve found Barbara’s phone number for me, and I rang her from his house. Next obstacle – would she remember me… I remember nearly everybody I have ever met but I can’t assume that other people are as peculiarly retentive. But - not a problem, “Oh yes, Marguerite Harmsen!” she said. “I often think of you when we are in Launceston. You lived in Westbury Road!” Well I didn’t, I lived in Poatina, but…she obviously had the right person! I spent quite a lot of my first few months at Launceston High being called Margaret Hudson, by a very Anglo teacher who couldn’t cope with such a foreign-sounding name as mine, but Barbara had it right! (By the way, this particular teacher was SO CROSS when he found out I wasn’t Margaret Hudson after all…he behaved as if I had been trying to deceive him…so strange…the thing we get into trouble for at school!!)

We arranged for a very hurried reunion, thanks to some nifty driving and organising on Steve’s part. He and Pete dropped me off at Barbara’s house while they went back into Whitemark to visit one of their aged aunts, Joan, at the nursing home. She was very tickled to see Pete. He had caused a lot of unholy amusement at the hospital because he had rung the first Mason in the phonebook, hoping to find Steve, or his cousin Jamie. Joan had answered the phone, and he had asked her politely, if she knew whether Joan Mason was still alive. “Well, yes!’ she snapped, “And you are speaking to her!” This story has swept around Flinders Island; we heard it back from several people we met later in our travels.

Barbara was exactly as I had imagined she would be, after all these years. She was a lovely girl at school, kind and gentle, with thick blonde hair and green eyes. She and her husband Kevin have been back on the island for many years, after a bit of time in Sydney, Townsville, Launceston. Kevin was a truck driver in the army; he now still does a bit of casual driving on Flinders but basically they are retired. Barbara is very creative; she does beautiful watercolour paintings, makes photo cards, and is creating a splendid garden. Kevin grows veggies; he filled a nice big box for us – enormous potatoes, carrots, kale, silver beet. The garden is growing very nicely; Barbara says that a house is much quicker to establish than a garden, so she is concentrating on this first. So at the moment they are living in a series of small garden sheds – bathroom in one, kitchen in another, bedroom in yet another. They have a great big shed for their creative endeavours as well. I had an hour with her, then Steve, Margaret and Pete swept up the drive to take me away, with my big box of veggies and five photocards.

Margaret dropped us off at the little beach where we had tied up the tender, and she went off to work. We loaded up our washing and veggies, and my beautiful new pillow… I didn’t tell you about this… Steve took us to see his former farm, where he still rents a big workshop. He and his wife Lou used to make a variety of woollen things there – doonas, pillows, jackets, vests. It was quite a thriving business in the 90s. Now he just keeps it ticking over, making the odd woollen doona. We were very impressed. The workroom is big and filled with light, with a beautiful outlook over farmland to the water. He had big industrial machines, including one which can quilt a king-sized doona. Whacko! I was inordinately impressed so Steve offered to show me how he makes a pillow. And then…well he had to give it to me, didn’t he… He offered it first to Cousin Pete, but Pete said it really should be for me, because he knows how I love pillows. I am so happy with it; I am going to give it a Product Placement! Steve’s company is called Latitude 40 degrees, and his website is: www.latitude40.com.au. So if you want a doona or a pillow - he doesn’t make any of the other items any more - you can go onto the website and order it, and imagine him in his sun-filled workroom, making whatever-it-is, just for you!

Steve sailed from Trousers Point to Lady Barron with us. We are here now, tied up to a big jetty - wel actually we have just moved to a smaller one because many big boats are about to come in.... The tides at Lady Barron are very big (2-3 metres), so we have, at times, had to make giant steps to get in and out of the boat. But it is lovely being at a jetty; very handy for The Bikes!

Steve’s son works on big super-yachts and he showed us some of them on the computer via Google. Such luxury! One of them, a Russian boat called Motor Yacht A, accommodates 14 guests and has 42 crew to make it all as luxurious and wonderful as possible! Another one, which used to be called Myshanti but I have forgotten the new name, uses a quarter of a million dollars worth of fuel just to cross the Atlantic…

We met Margaret at the tavern a bit before seven last night and had a lovely evening. Filet Mignon all round! At the tavern Pete met up Dave Madden, who used to be a stock agent in Tasmania for Roberts. This morning he said, “Let’s go for a bike ride!” It was a beautiful morning, crisp and clear and sunny, so off we went, along the main road from Lady Barron to Whitemark. I enjoyed this ride very much, Pedalling Pete not so much. It hurt his leg muscles very badly, he said… We had just set out when a big white sea eagle swooped overhead, and flew into the bushes behind us. Wow! “Look out!” cried Pete. “He’s about to land on your back!” Oh such an elfin sense of humour… I do love birds, and am inordinately fascinated by eagles, but I do NOT want them landing on my back… We rode along the gently undulating road, with hardly any traffic to disturb us. Paddocks full of contented fat back cattle and greedily grazing geese. The only impediment to compete riding pleasure was…the road kill. Every few hundred metres a large dead marsupial. Depressing, distressing, smelly… I remember when Claire came to Flinders with the Reid family. She went bike riding with Juliet and Sophie every day. It was very hot and their riding pleasure was short lived because of the roadkill. The horrid smell was overpowering and made the whole experience very unpleasant indeed. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been; even today, when it was chilly, I had to hold my breath a lot of the time.

Well do you want to know where we were going, on this lovely winter day?? I will tell you tomorrow… Pete thinks I am writing far too much – too much information… but I say, well if it is too much, nobody has to read it, do they? (And yes Dave Madden comes back into the story...)