Monday 14th January

Monday 14^th January

We have had a few Attenborough Moments in Bicheno:

·      A large stingray following Nicky and the children along the shallows, causing a great gust of shrieking from some bikini-clad teenage girls further down the beach.

·      Many penguins snuggled up cutely in their burrows.  These cute penguins turned out to be Bad Neighbours at night.  Katy and Jeff were woken to a cacophony of shrieking and chirping as the parents came in from the sea to feed their babies.  As much shrieking, really, as a bevy of teenage girls.

·      A very cute small baby bluetongue lizard

We have also had some major first-aid and biology lessons…

Jeff somehow injured his leg while frolicking in the shallows yesterday.  We got the best service imaginable from Homer, the local pharmacist, who rose to the occasion and provided advice, crutches, sandwiches and gastrolytes to our wounded warrior before he was whisked off to the Royal by his able chauffeur, Gavin.  Homer not only offered a wheelchair and light refreshments, he also rushed off to the Log Cabin Shop (which, incidentally, sells every imaginable object,) to buy a soft paintbrush with which to brush the sand from between Jeff’s alarmingly nerveless toes.  You will be pleased to hear that his toes were only temporarily nerveless; when the swelling went down, all feeling returned.  His injury is debilitating and annoying, in that he has to keep weight off his leg, and preferably has to keep it elevated and iced, for quite some time to come.  But…he didn’t need surgery, and didn’t have to stay in hospital overnight, so all is well.  He has “only” torn one of his major calf muscles; it could have been much worse.  Pete rang from Hobart this morning to see if Jeff was in the hospital, requiring visitors, and maybe, he said kindly, a nice big bunch of…pansies.

Meanwhile back on 2XS…guess what??  The toilet isn’t working so Pete has to spend another few joyful days dismantling the system and poking around in the pipes.

As well as this, the spinnaker blew out in a sudden squall on the way back to town from the Cygnet Folk Festival yesterday.  It is totally shredded…oh dear, oh no…

India #69

Raj was our Jaipur driver.  I selected him, not sure how… Pete and I left Vish and Mary in the railway station where they were getting information about accommodation, while Pete and I went over to another building to see about booking tickets to go on to Udaipor a few days later.  We all had frustrating experiences in various ways, and I had to go from one group to the other relaying messages.  Lots of touts and drivers were hanging out, waiting to get our custom.  One of them, dressed in blinding white, was Raj.  He wasn’t pushy at all, and managed to stop me from walking quite a long way in the heat towards a large fence with no gate on my way back to find Vish and Mary.  He said, in calm tones, that if we needed a driver, he was available.  I said that actually there were four of us and that we needed a taxi not an autorickshaw, and he said, No problem, I can get one!  He did indeed come up with the goods, a rickety little white van, into which all five of us squishy squashed at various times.  

Raj is a cheery Moslem man, 34, with five children.  He lives at home with his two brothers and their wives and children, his “mums,” his wife and children, all in one small house.  His brothers both drive rickshaws as well.  “We are the Open Air Connection!” he said, proudly.  He works 12-15 hours a day so that he can send his children to private school.  He was very scathing about the state system – children only get four hours a day and he wants his children to have opportunities.  Raj never went to school, was working when he was eight.  When he was in his early teens he started riding a bike rickshaw, which he said was incredibly hard, especially as rickshaws are at the bottom of the food chain in Indian traffic.  Everything else has a horn of some sort; bike rickshaws are silent and have to duck and weave even more than other vehicles.  He graduated to autorickshaw, and now is just about to pay off his own.  His next move is to buy a taxi.  We had every faith that he would achieve this, and that his children would more than likely go to university and end up running the country! 

On one of our first trips, he called up another rickshaw driver, who took Pete and me.  He was a very serious, thoughtful young man, who lives at home with his mother, father and brother.  He told me, smiling shyly, that he can now think of getting married because his sisters have all been provided for, with dowries and husbands.  He has learned his very good English entirely from tourists in his rickshaw.  We went down a particularly bumpy road with huge potholes, and he said, very apologetically, “I am so sorry, I know you have very good roads in Australia, not like these.”  What I want to know is – how did he know this??  He hasn’t been to school, doesn’t have TV or even electricity!  We asked him to take us somewhere to buy beer, and he gave us lots of detail about where we could buy Fosters.  “No no,” said Pete, “Kingfisher will do, forget about the Fosters.”  The driver said, with great dignity, “That is up to you, your choice, but it is my duty to tell you these things.”