Saturday 28th January

There MIGHT be movement at the station today…

We have paid up our marina fees and have handed back (sob) our keys to the showers.  This morning when I went, early, Chris was there with his Weimaraner, wanting to point out to me that there was a very big black snake under the water barrel near the entrance to the toilets.  But all I could see was the weeny little tip of a tail.  Maybe he was expecting me to have hysterics and need a bit of a rescue but…snakes are fine.  If, however, if it had been a big and hairy spider showing a weeny tip of leg, that would have been a different matter!

We are hoping to move a bit closer to the exit of the Broadwater, with a view to leaving the Gold Coast tomorrow.  And what is the weather like, I hear you cry??  Black black skies… At this very moment it isn’t raining, but every now and then the heavens open and rain buckets down in prodigious quantities.

Yesterday we drove to the mouth of the Tweed River, to get an idea of what the bars might be like further down the coast.  Horrendous!  A constant surge of big breaking waves, with hardly a gap between.  We couldn’t possibly get in; here’s hoping things are a bit more civilised further south.

After many phone calls and procrastinations, we did make it to Tweed Heads to visit Darv Wilkins, who is our friend John Miedecke’s godfather,  and quite closely related to the whole Miedecke tribe.  My darling iPhone came to the rescue with a nice little map, which showed The Uterus as a glowing blue dot making its way down the express to Coolangatta-Tweed Heads and then up Scenic Drive right to Darv’s door.  (I am a nervous map-reader and navigator and find it just a bit difficult to tell left from right so it was a great comfort to me to be able to clutch my iPhone and watch the blue dot, confirming our route.)

And what a door to arrive at!  Darv lives on top of a hill in a comfortable house surrounded by a big verandah, in the middle of five acres of lush green jungle garden.  He will be 90 in April and moved there twelve years ago.  I gather it wasn’t a lush jungle paradise in those days.  He told us he had to clear about fifty big straggly pine trees before he could re-create what looked very like a patch of Vanuatu paradise on Bilambil Heights.

Darv and his wife and four children lived in Vanuatu, as part of the British administration, until 1977.  They had four years on Tanna, where Darv had – he must have counted – 34 trips up the volcano with distinguished guests.  They then moved to Port Stanley on Malekula.  Last year Darv went back, with some of his offspring.  He expected that nobody would remember him and that it might be a disappointment, but they all had the most wonderful time.  There were banners across the street in his honour, and ceremonial feasts, because, ofcourse, people remembered him and his family with great joy and affection.  His daughters now want to go and live in Vanuatu, where they had such a happy childhood, and I gather Darv is quite tempted to end his days there as well…

We had a lovely visit; we were both so glad we managed to get there, thanks to Tim and Sally’s Uterus!  While we were in the living room, I saw some photos on a sideboard – a big formal photo of people in evening wear.  I got up to look, thinking it might be a wedding photo of Darv and his bride, but no, it was a photo of a youthful, glowing Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.  I sat back down and said, “Darv, I thought that photo was you and Maureen, but it’s only Liz and Phil!”  He brightened and said, “Did you see the one of me with Liz?”  And indeed, next the royal portrait is a photo of a young, red-headed Darv striding along a path on Pentecost Island, wearing crisp shorts and a shirt, with a happy-looking Liz smiling at his side.  He said it was quite dreadful, really, because he took Liz and Phil to watch the vine-jumping.  This is the precursor to bungee-jumping, where they build a bamboo tower and young men hurtle to the ground with vines tied around their ankles to break their fall.  One of the young men crash landed with a horrid thump… Poor Queen Elizabeth looked horrified and Darv said, cheerily, “Don’t worry, ma’am, nobody is ever hurt, they do this all the time!”  And then later he had to scuttle along to her lodgings and said, “Oh dear sorry but…the young man is dead.”