Wednesday 9^th May

I am in beautiful St Helens on the East Coast.

Sans Pete, sans 2XS…

Also sans the freedom to idle away my time admiring the beauty – I am here for work!  No complaints, I am very lucky to get a work trip, especially to the East Coast…

And while I have been to St Helens with Pete, I haven’t been here on 2XS – the bar is formidable and we skittered on past it on our way north last year.

2XS, however, has been here, with Pete And Crew, in 2010, when he took the boat up to the Whitsundays.  They had to cross the bar, formidable or not, because there was engine trouble.  They were here for quite a few days, getting the issues sorted.  One day they met a raggedy chap who started a cheery conversation.  When he left he said, “Would you like some prawns?”  Well there is only one answer to that, isn’t there??  A few hours later he turned up with a BUCKET full of fresh prawns!  He wouldn’t dream of taking any money, nor did he want a six-pack.  “Me missus and I gave up drinking.  It wasn’t doing us no good,” he said, and went on his way.  Pete And Crew were very happy.

Monday 7^th May

Pete has been in hospital, for what he calls “a bit of maintenance.”  He stayed in a few days longer than expected and had to have blood transfusions and a big dose of morphine.  When I went to pick him up at 4.00 on Saturday, I expected a pale and shaky person to limp out to the car, but no, there was Pete, his usual buoyant self, striding down the corridor.  A very welcome sight!

Pete’s favourite meal in the entire world is…lamb chops with potatoes and broad beans.  I thought very seriously about producing this sort of meal for his Welcome Home but…this is very much the sort of cooking I am not particularly good at.  Much better to try an entirely new recipe for a special seafood risotto with lots of white wine and a bit of sour cream.  I had found this on Kirsty Rice’s blog, Shamozal.  She made it sound so enticing I just had to put on an apron and give it a go.  Fortunately…she was right and yes it was delicious, and probably better for Pete’s delicate convalescent system than lamb chops would have been.

And no he didn’t take it easy enough on Sunday.  We went to lunch at the Crescent Hotel with Greg, and also Dad and Fleur.  Dad and Greg were very much engrossed in a conversation about classical music, and why the Germans have produced so very many of the best composers and scientists in the modern world.  The rest of us ate our lunch and chatted about less elevated matters. 

After lunch we took Greg to MONA – he can’t spend all this time in Tasmania without going there, now can he?  Pete isn’t allowed to drive for a week, and then only for ten minutes a day, so he and Greg had to put up with me as their chauffeur, which I am sure was not entirely pleasant for them, but never mind!  We got there and back without mishap. 

Pete had barely got to the front door when he turned a not entirely pleasing shade of off-white.  MONA has state-of-the-art wheelchairs and he very gratefully sank into one, nicely padded and upholstered in black.  I was very happy; I love having CONTROL.

Later that night Emma, one of Pete’s tenants, popped in while we were cosily ensconced watching MasterChef, so I was able to get a variety of opinions on MONA to present to you:

James Headlam (29), by textmessage: MONA sux

Greg Soraka (62), in person: kinky!  And why this juxtaposition of antiquities and extreme modernity?  Tasmania is…weird!

Emma (23): MONA is amazing!  Wouldn’t it make a GREAT nightclub??

Zeehan

We had an extra day in Strahan because the wind was too ferocious for us to leave on Tuesday.  Ron said, “Keep my car till you leave!  Go up to Zeehan and look through the museum.  A lot of history, up there.”  So…we did!  And yes a very fascinating and well-presented museum.  Lots of old photos and information and interpretation.  And out in the yard there were huge chunks of rusty mine machinery, old locomotives, a replica miner’s hut, pumps, compressors, and enormous bell used by the fire wardens.  We walked around the Gaiety Theatre, all part, now, of the museum complex.  They show old movies every half hour.  We chanced upon one called Stop Thief, about the Kelly gang.  The NFSA (National Film and Sound Archive) have renovated as much as they can of these old films.  Lots of bits were missing, but the music played on bravely.

I said I could NOT go into the museum until I had had a cup of coffee.  “Want! Want! Want! Is all I hear from you”, sighed Pete, in pitiful tones.  But really…I find museums and galleries quite difficulty to negotiate because I can’t stand for long periods of time (Computer Says No; thus speaks my acheybreaky lower back) and the sort of walking one does in a museum or gallery is just a bit too slow (Computer wants to Say No.)  But I did find it all very interesting, a huge achievement for a small West Coast town.

There was, thank heavens, one coffee shop and it was open.  All very warm and cosy inside, which was another blessing.  Later in the museum we were talking to some local blokes and they laughed merrily when we told them we had gone to the café.  “It’s only been open a few months”, said one of them.  “The poor bugger has moved here from the Northern Territory.  He can’t believe how few people there are here, or how cold it gets.”  I do have limited sympathy for the café man.  But really, what was he expecting, in Zeehan??

Craypots

Before we left Strahan, we spent a bit of time with Ron, who had lent us his ute and his big solid mooring in Mill Bay.  Pete went and chatted to him on beautiful Maatsuyker, Ron’s beloved yacht, while I sat on Petuna and talked to Rodney.  Petuna is piled high with great big craypots, so I asked him a bit about them.  Not sure if many people have examined a craypot very carefully but…they are works of art!  They are either made of steel, or of wood which has been steamed and curved around a frame.  The top of the pot, where the crayfish crawl in, is made of woven cane, shaped liked big sunhat with the crown cut out.  Rodney makes his own pots, and the very best of them last a maximum of 20 months.  So he always has a few pots on the go.  It takes him a whole day to make just one.  He has sold a few, and was a bit put out that they companied at the price -$200.  His wife, Louise, calculated his hourly rate - $0.35.  So not really a good idea to sell his pots!

I asked how many crays they would get in each pot, imagining maybe five, or ten… But no – they generally get 200 in each pot!  The crayfish are free to climb in and out of the pots, and every now and then they all evacuate in terror – octopus coming for some fast food!

Rodney gave us a lovely big fillet of fish when we first arrived. I told him how much we had enjoyed it, and how it had lasted for two dinners and two lunches.  “Well I wouldn’t have given it to you if it was no good, would I” he said, gruffly.

Thursday 3^rd May

Pete’s son James thinks Greg pops up everywhere.  On Anzac Day we were invited to the opening of the Good Guys, a big new shop selling electrical goods, in Main Road Moonah.  James’s girlfriend Bron is the manager and it was the Family And Friends day.  Pete and I admired everything, bought nothing, and had a drink or two (cups of tea for me…beer for Pete…I was so very tired I couldn’t even consider a glass of wine; I would have passed out on top of the tasteful display of vacuum cleaners.)  Greg, who had, of course, come with us, trotted up and down the aisles, clucking in amazement at all of the new technology – he hasn’t been in such a shop for seven and a half years.  James, who was idly inspecting the goods, suddenly heard a familiar Canadian voice; “Hello James, what’s a Blu Ray?”  He wheeled around – Greg is everywhere!!

When I was hunting for the coffee maker in Pete’s store room, I rang James to ask if he had seen it.  A few minutes later I sent him a text: Found behind a pile of scungy cushions.  He wrote back, instantly, Who?  Greg?  This running joke is giving James and me hours of enjoyment; I don’t think Pete is finding it anywhere near as funny…

I have to put this in

No nothing at all to do with 2XS, or sailing…

Just maybe to do with my very own one and only phobia - large and hairy…spiders!

This was a haiku in yesterday’s Mercury, by Jason Jordan (@jasonjordan on twitter, Perth WA TV and radio presenter)

By the way in case you are not familiar with the haiku…Traditional Japanese haiku consist of 17 on (also known as morae), in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 on respectively.  A haiku is supposed to present a juxtaposition of ideas but this one…doesn’t…

It is simply titled:

A Haiku about Spiders:

No No No No No

No No No No No No No

No No No No No

I love it!!!

Wednesday 2^nd May

On Wednesday 25^th April I was very much fast asleep in my cosy warm bunk on 2XS.  At 7.00 Pete, in startlingly chipper tones, said, “Time to go!”  Oh no…I thought he might have forgotten his clearly stated aim of the night before.  To join in the Anzac Day parade…

I didn’t object to this in principle, but in reality I was so tired, and so keen on staying asleep – no need to leap about and get ready for work!  So very bleary-eyed and tottery I was as we walked across to the path leading to the Cenotaph, just a few hundred metres from the marina.  It was cold and bleak and threatening to rain, and amazingly, there were hundreds of people making their way along the path.  Family groups, old codgers, school children.

The service was beautiful, and so familiar – the same hymns, the same words, as we repeated every year in freezing Royal Park when I was at Launceston High.  A pipe band, a brass band, a soprano, a bugler who played most beautifully. 

In the midst of the crowd we spied Greg, our lone-sailor Canadian friend, in his red lumberjack shirt.  He came for dinner the next day and we asked him what he had thought.  “Well,” he said, very seriously, “It was the best service I have ever been to.  Very moving.  Lovely live music - a brass band, for heaven’s sake!  Nice to see so many people with wreaths; a great crowd of all ages.  It was, however, much too religious for me.”  And then, after a bit more thought, “But any amount of religion is too much for me.”