Wednesday 22^nd February

So where are we now?

Well Pete is back on 2XS, making his way down to Port Hacking, with our lovely friend Steve Mason on board.

And I am in a far-flung corner of Melbourne airport, plugged in to various power points near a deserted little café.  We left the marina at 5.00 this morning and it will take me exactly twelve hours to get to Hobart from Sydney…

Kind sister-in-law Karen picked us up at this ghastly early hour – she had to take her daughter Kate and Kate’s friend Alice to their school, Wenona, in North Melbourne to catch a bus to a camp in the Blue Mountains.  I asked if they would be staying in tents and Karen laughed, slightly bitterly.  “I don’t think so!  At the fees this school charges…I imagine they will be staying four star at least!”  Karen and I discussed school camp – Kate and Alice were totally silent in the back seat, with Pete.  I think they were stupefied and stunned by their early rising, as were we all, just a bit.  Karen said she had only once been on a school trip, all by herself, to something called Summer Camp.  She didn’t question it, just allowed herself to be picked up and taken off with a whole group of girls she had never seen before.  She enjoyed it – Karen has a very nice nature and enjoys everything which comes her way – but she was a teensy bit nonplussed to be far from home amongst total strangers for the duration. It was only years later that she found out that this was a great honour – the teachers at her school selected one particularly deserving student each year to go to Summer Camp, and Karen had obviously impressed all and sundry that particular year.  She had no idea of any of this… I think they could have made just a tiny bit of a fuss and maybe presented her with an award to go along with the Summer Camp Treat.  A more anxious, paranoid child than Karen might have thought she was being punished!

I am very much looking forward to seeing my family and friends, and my beloved Tasmania, but I am very sad to be parted from Pete for eighteen days.  We have hardly been out of earshot of each other since May…

Yesterday was what my friend Ann-Marie would describe as A Hoot.  Pete’s long-lost friend Martin Cooper had devised all manner of entertainment for us.  His son Ben picked us up at 11.00 and dropped us off in Macleay Street, Potts Point.  Ben was a very nice bloke but he couldn’t stay to chat with Ancient Tasmanian Friends.  He runs a very successful nightclub in Oxford Street and is a mover and a shaker.  As is his father, big-time!

Martin and his wife, Kathy Gross, live in a a beautiful stately apartment during the week and in a beach house during the weekend.  They are both very busy.  Kathy is a fashion mogul (Harry Who and George Gross – George is her twin brother.)  We met her in the evening, when she cooked a pasta dish for us.  She is a gentle, calm person.  She and George arrived in Australia as refugees after the war when they were thirteen.  They had fled over the mountains – all of their friends and relations were wiped out in a particularly vicious last-stage-of-the war pogrom against the Jewish population of Hungary.  She didn’t know any English at all when she arrived but…she is a clever girl and very swiftly learned and became…a mover and shaker in the fashion industry, along with her equally successful brother.  No she didn’t tell us anything of the sort, she isn’t a boastful person.  But Martin is very (justifiably) proud of her and told us her story over lunch.

And what a lunch!  We went to the China Doll in the Finger Wharf building at Woolloomooloo.  We were mightily impressed and let Martin’s fingers do the walking over the menu.  His older brother Simon was there, with his wife, Sue.  They were all very happy to see Pete – they hadn’t seen him, they calculated, since 1973, and there he was, larger than life and full of bonhomie!  Lunch was fabulously tasty – we had five dishes to share and each was more delicious than the last.

After lunch Sue and Simon left - Simon is still working as a stockbroker and had to go back to his office.  Poor Simon… Martin, Pete and I went for a stroll through the gardens down to the waterfront, after trying, unsuccessfully, to go to the Picasso exhibition at the nearby Art Gallery of NSW.  Martin was very put-out that it was closing in one minute – we got there at 4.59.  “Outrageous!” he cried.  “They should be open till midnight!”  Hmmm…

On the way back to Macleay Street we went to various favourite watering holes of Martin’s – the Tilbury Hotel, all very schmick, and then the Gazebo, in King’s Cross.  I was on iced water by then and have no idea why I couldn’t get out of the toilet… I had locked the door and could NOT get it open.  It was quite a nice little toilet, if a bit cramped and dark.  I breathed in and out, trying not to panic, and read all of the artfully-composed graffiti.  For example: A woman drove me to drink and I never had the courtesy to thank her.  Breathe…breathe… I tried again, no luck.  So I tried ringing Pete, and then, with growing unease, Martin.  No reception in the dark and airless little cubicle…breathe BREATHE!  The artfully composed graffiti was losing its charm… Finally, miraculously, the door popped open.  I don’t know if Martin and Pete would EVER have noticed I was no longer with them.  They were full of good cheer, sampling red wine by the glass when I emerged, shaking slightly.

Eventually we went back to Macleay Street, were Kathy was preparing her pasta dish for us.  Martin sat next to me and showed me his year-in-photos on his little Mac.  This was very pleasant and soothing.  Lots of shots of the silver sea at Big Sur, lots of dinner parties and lunch parties, lots of snaps of Martin’s good-looking children, Ben and Lucy.  Lucy is a film producer and lives in New York, in a beautiful apartment with its own rooftop garden, and an endearingly mixed-breed dog.  Her boyfriend, Jake, is very handsome, and I had a few moments of GULP GOLLY and GOSH because, there, in amongst the Cooper family snaps, was Sting.  I LOVE Sting!  In fact Sting is over-represented on my ipod… Sting is Jake’s father… “Oh,” said Martin, airily, when I professed my love for Sting.  “I’ll introduce you to him!”

We took a taxi back to Middle Harbour Yacht Club and happily went to sleep in our cosy little nest, for the last time for 18 days…

Steve arrived at Gate 49 at 9.05 and I had to board at 9.05 at Gate 55… But there was a bit of overlap time because my flight was delayed, and in fact I didn’t get to Sydney till well after 12.00.  Lovely to see Steve; I am sure he and Pete will have a great time on the boat.  I just wish I could be with them AND home with my family!  Steve is the only crew member this time and has the best cabin…when he came from Lord Howe Island to New Caledonia with us in June he had to sleep in the worst cabin and had to share the bunk with the bikes…