Friday 28th
October 2016
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| Oh how tattered is our poor flag! |
Townsville.
Hot!
Last night we met up with my in-laws. Sharon, Lindy
and John at the Seaview Hotel, along the Strand. It is a big, casual pub, with a large airy
beer garden. Specialising in chicken parmies
and rump steak with chips. All very
causal and pleasant. We were happily chatting
when suddenly there was a rumpus and a ruckus – a young chap, very drunk and probably
behaving badly, was flung to the ground by two large and fairly calm bouncers. He thrashed and screamed and hurled very nasty
invectives. It was all quite horrible and
apparently I screamed. (Michael, my
hyper-critical son, was not impressed…)
It was all over quite soon and Lindy and I were able to share with everyone
the information that this very same badboy had chatted to us at the bar, quite
benignly, when we went up to get our drinks.
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| Sharon, Lindy, John |
Michael drove us back to the marina and then went
home. On his way past Stocklands
(shopping mall) he came across a large gang of boys, fighting, with police cars
ariving, sirens blaring. He had been trying
to tell us that Townsville is Crime Central, but it all seems so very solid and
benign to us. Except maybe for our pink-cheeked
drunk boy at the Seaview…
We have nearly finished all of our boat jobs. I have scoured my last surface and have
emptied out many cupboards. The garbage
bins at Breakwater Marina are groaning under the load! Pete has met up with a nice young mechanic called
Brad who thinks he will be able to fix the engine. A BIG job but at least it is now about to
happen. Pete was a bit worried because
everyone he spoke to (until Brad) was just too busy.
So now maybe I will go back to missing bits of blog, starting
where I left off, more or less
Friday 23rd
September
11 degrees 08.561S
152 degrees
43.393E
Bagaman Island
Louisiades, PNG
At last we are back in this beautiful anchorage, off a
beautiful curved beach, surrounded by sand and large coral bommies, on Bagaman
Island. This is where we thought we were
heading, when we left Hobart in 2013…But instead of turning left at Cairns, we
turned right instead and joined the Sail Komodo Indonesia Rally.
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| Moses and Pete |
It is five years, almost exactly, since we were here
last. There are more children; Moses’s
little boy Mark is now six, and there is a new little cheeky toddler, Kedari. Cheery Sam, from another village along the bay,
who perched on the deck chatting to Rachel, looking for all the world like a
dark pixie, died recently. So did Monica,
one of the three girls (Monica, Maggie and Lakmae) who visited us regularly,
full of giggles, in 2011. She was only
fifteen and died of some mysterious complaint before she could get to
hospital. Her namesake aunt Monica said,
darkly, “Black magic.”
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| Lyla and Marguerite |
But the water is the same, clear, cool, lovely. I have swum the length of the beach a couple
of times already. Yesterday I saw all of
my old familiar bommies, a lot of fish, one turtle, and one large and very
startled shark. By large I mean about
the same size as I am… I had swum over a large bommie and came upon it
unaware. I hung back a bit, watching it,
and then suddenly it sensed my presence and off it went into the deep blue, as
fast as its fins would carry it.
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| Bagaman children |
Moses brought this family to visit last night - Lyla
and the three boys. I heard the canoe
pull up, and went out into the dark, saying, quite sternly, “No visitors until
tomorrow!” A deep voice came from below,
“But it is Moses!” And so of course the
whole family was welcome to come on board and eat some of my leftover birthday
cake.
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| (Aunt) Monica |
We have had a few visitors today, but all in modest
numbers, with not too many demands. My
sewing machine has been whirring away.
The boys seem to wear out their shorts in a most alarming manner. They wear them hanging around their legs with
no bottom or penis coverage at all… They seem very happy to have them back all
in one piece, with their modesty once again protected.
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| Lyla and boys (MarkMos and Kedari) |
Tonight we have ben invited to Moses and Lyla’s
house. They still live with his father
and mother, Gulo and Sanity, with big brother Keith and big sister Barbara, and
a random collection of young boys, loosely related. I have warned Pete NOT to stand up straight
inside the house. Last time we went
there he got to his feet and clonked his head on an overhead beam. I still have the photo of the gaping wound on
his poor bald head…
And tomorrow we have been invited to Letma’s house.
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| Letma |
Moses has been very busy working for us already. He got up at dawn and went diving – we now
have the fridge stocked with beautiful lobster.
And today he is cleaning the hulls, with coconut fibre. He is very strong, with a most impressive
six-pack, but when I came back from my swim I found him clinging to the anchor
chain puffing and panting. It is very
hard work. I have been struggling away
with the green slime and the barnacles and haven’t made much impact at all.
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