Monday 8^th October

My taxi driver last week was very pleased to see me.  Apparently he was one of my most recent oldcodger drivers.  I said, untruthfully, Oh yes, of course I remember you!  How are things?  Wrong question…things are not good in TaxiDriverWorld.  My poor oldcodger is driving around – maybe too much information – with a catheter which is making him deeply unhappy.  He is going back to hospital to have A Procedure next month and he is very worried, as well he might be.  I was as reassuring as possible and got out of the taxi very much needing to have a nice big nip of Jeff’s restorative port.  (Which is maybe why I fell asleep on the beanbag while trying to watch a very informative ABC program…)

Sunday 7^th October

Yesterday was definitely a 2XS Day.  The opening of the Tasmanian yachting season is a very big deal on the Derwent.  I had only ever seen this from the land – a great mass of boat, going in circles around the waterfront, then milling about Sandy Bay and the Eastern Shore.  It was all very exciting, for me, to be, as Pete would say, up close and personal.

We started off with a very splendid breakfast at the Motor Yacht Club, former home of 2XS and still a very nice place to be.  Eggs Benedict, beautifully cooked, for $5; barista-style coffee for $2.  A band was playing, pleasantly, on the deck – End of Conversation, a good name for a band.  We spent a pleasant hour or so there, waiting to win major prizes – Pete won a (slightly ghastly) very large polo shirt, grey with racing car insignia.  One of Tim’s friends at the next table won a bright yellow cap and some ancient wobbly aviator sunglasses.  Jan won an even more lurid polo shirt than Pete’s, which she said would go down a treat with her grandson.  The major prize – a jackpot of $1138 – well, we didn’t win that…

We loaded up 2XS with friends and food in Prince of Wales Bay and set off after 12 to join the line-up.  The weather was fine – not hot, cold, windy or raining.  (Well a little bit chilly…but nothing unbearable.)  Lunch was easy – sausages and salad stuff in bread and I, for one, enjoyed it all very much.  We joined our friends from the Motor Yacht Club and swung around the Governor’s boat to salute the dignitaries.  This all sounds very impressive and orderly but in fact it was a teensy bit chaotic, with boats of all sizes and abilities wheeling around in a confined space.  We actually had a collision, right in front of the Governor, whose boat was also very nearly involved in the fracas.  We were all too surprised, to put it mildly, to do anything sensible like getting out our videocameras to take proper note of The Incident.  2XS came off worse for wear with a small but visible dent and we were all left on deck, eyes popping.  A large boat, Southern Explorer came bearing down on 2XS, at what seemed an alarming speed, and cut in between 2XS and the Governor’s boat, leaving very little space and, as I said, a small but horrid dent.  Pete coped well with the temporary difficulty but he was just a bit shaken.

After these formalities we cruised on down past Sandy Bay and then slowly made our way back.  Did I say the weather was nice?  Well by then, it wasn’t… The men (Pete and Peter and Chris) all happily scampered around on deck putting sails up and down, and the women (Angela, Annie, Deirdre and I) - well we sat around inside very happily chatting. 

We were all off the boat, shivering faintly, by 6.15 and everyone was happy.

Saturday 6th October

 

Someone in the corridors at work told me the other day about a hearing in the Supreme Court in Launceston. A witness for the defence was asked, by the defendant’s lawyer, who had, one would have thought, prepared his witness for his Special Moment in the limelight, whether he had received a certain crucial email in August.

 

“No.”

 

“Are you sure you didn’t receive it? I sent it to you and I understood you had read and responded to it.”

 

“No.”

 

Baffled silence from the lawyer

 

“So you are saying you definitely didn’t receive it?”

 

“Well I’m not good with computers; my wife does all of that. And probably she wasn’t speaking to me at the time so she didn’t pass it on.”

I

 wouldn’t be a lawyer for quids! A horrid mixture of stress and boredom…

 

Compiling a list of Worst Jobs Ever has always been a secret little time-wasting interest of mine. My friend Amanda, with whom I worked years ago in a completely different workplace, shared this fascination. We would sally out into the world visiting families and childcare centres and agencies, and would come back, all agog with yet another Worst Job. But I think we REALLY found the most difficult job you could imagine when we went to a conference, and heard some very saintly people describing their particular area of expertise. They were called something like Special Family Support Workers, and were paid not very much at all. They were expected to work with families at risk, and to stay with them for six week periods. And really stay with them, as in twelve hours a day. Breakfast, daytime, dinner, sometimes overnight.  Some of these families were in a state of crisis, with the very real threat of losing their children to what they all call The Welfare. Lots of violence, shouting, abuse, tantrums from children and adults alike. The support workers would model appropriate behaviour, mediate family and neighbourhood disputes and generally try to calm everything down and get the whole family out of a fragile state and into a more harmonious way of being.

 

Great.

 

And then when they had finished their time and could heave a sigh of relief…they would be sent off to yet another family with violence, abuse, tantrums, shouting….

 

Nightmare Job!!!

Friday 5^th October

So…today’s blog is going to be totally serious and preachy.

Last night Pete and I went to the Richard Jones Memorial lecture at Tas Uni.  (The last one I went to was in 1987…David Suzuki, full of passion re sustainability and exponential growth.  What have I been doing in the years between then and now???)

Bob Brown gave a very sensible but alarming talk and showed us a bit of film about the beautiful Kimberley region, and then told us what is proposed… I have cut out a few bits from various news sites and I think we should all send an email to Tony Burke asking him to reconsider his support this particular site.  The positive point he made was that there is an alternative site which will be cheaper for the gas company and much less disruptive to the environment.  The only reason they are proposing the Kimberly site is that it is considered to be a vote winner in Western Australia…

The alternative option – piping the gas south to the existing North West Shelf industrial site – offers lower capital costs and fewer risks

Australia's meant to be hosting the biggest liquefied natural gas project in the world, worth $30 billion. But will it ever go ahead, with a massive row over its future?

James Price Point, the proposed site of a vast gas processing factory in Western Australia's remote Kimberley region, is now the focus of Brown's energy. The joint venture, led by Woodside Petroleum, will cost upwards of $30 billion to build and threatens to despoil Aboriginal sacred sites, the offbeat culture of Broome, and the world's longest trail of fossilised dinosaur footprints.

It's the whales, though, that Brown particularly wants to save.

''We have our place, the whales deserve to have theirs,'' he says simply. The gas factory plan calls for a lengthy breakwater that would cut through a whale migration route that leads to what is thought to be the world's largest nursery for humpback calves.

''We were in the inflatable boat, about two kilometres off the point, and a baby whale calf came up right in front of us and let out a great, melodious sigh,'' Brown says of his recent voyage to the gas factory site aboard a Sea Shepherd vessel.

''Then, further along, another calf came up out of the ocean and splashed back in, and it was followed by its mother, which sent up a huge fountain of water beside us. That's going to be with me for the rest of my life.''

The main concern of the Wilderness Society and other groups throwing resources into the campaign is that the large-scale dredging required for the gas port will create a ''dead zone'' across the whales' traditional migration route. They also warn that it could damage and disrupt turtle and dugong populations.

So… send an email to: Tony.Burke.MP@aph.gov.au

Thursday 4th October

Yesterday I wrote about the current Taroona High School family members.  My nephew Will Harmsen was there last year and is now a student at Hobart College.  He is a most charming and delightful person, as is his younger brother Tim – every family should have a Tim, says his mother, Andrea, as Tim comes into the room smiling radiantly and holding aloft a plate of freshly baked anzacs-with-a-twist…

But to return to Will, our topic du jour.  Will is not only, as I have said, a charming and delightful person, he is also tall, handsome and an EXTREMELY good swimmer.  He has broken many state records and is now ensconced at the Institute of Sports in Canberra as part of the Australian squad.

Synchronicity…

It just so happens – how fortuitous is this – that Nicky is also in Canberra, with 60 Grade 6 girls from St Mary’s College.  At our family lunch on Saturday, she said, Oh wouldn’t it be just wonderful if we could see Will…even if just for a moment…  They had planned to visit the Institute of Sport, but we all thought Will would be head down in the pool, following that black line.

Last night I got a text from Nicky:

Will just came and spoke to 60 girls.  He was awesome and they are all very twinkly eyed now.  Was so nice of him to give up a game of pool for us.

(Oh OK so he wasn’t actually IN a pool…)

I imagine Nicky’s credit rating with St Mary’s Grade Sixers has risen several notches for having such a cool cousin!

Wednesday 3rd October

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go on an inspection of an IT work site at Taroona High School at 2.30.

It all felt very strange…

We were in a meeting room on the landward side of the building, so I wasn’t able to gaze out of the window, lost in views of the river, as I did whenever possible when I was a small student there, a very long time ago.

It was a very new school then, all bright and shiny.  It is much bigger now, and slightly less bright and shiny, but still situated in the most magnificent situation possible, right on the Derwent, with two fascinating little beaches just below the sports ground.  I was a dreamy child, not particularly good at concentrating – not much has changed…  I don’t know what I thought about when I gazed out at the river.  I know I was always looking for dolphins, whales, albatross, and that I never saw any of the above. 

Things have changed!  There are now dolphins aplenty in the Derwent, and in the last few years whales have come back to breed, and have been photographed frolicking with their calves right near Taroona High.  If I had a time machine I would go back and tell that small girl, dreaming out the window, that one day she would see MANY albatross and that yes, this would make her very happy.  I would also tell her that life would be good, with many unexpected twists and turns.  I don’t think I would ever then have believed that I would actually sail past those very windows, in a lovely comfy big boat, on my way to the South Pacific!  Or that I would go on day trips down the Channel, past the school, with my ever-growing family, armed with fishing rods and squid jigs.

I have a long association with this school. 

• Dad taught there in 1958, in the very first year, when Taroona High was the very first comprehensive high school in the state. 
• I then went there for two years before leaving for the much gloomier, greyer Launceston High School 
• My then husband Thad taught there from 13^th March 1973 – I remember the date well because it was the day I was in hospital giving birth to Nicky…
• My brothers Pete and Chris were next
• Nicky, Claire and Katy not long after
• Two of my three sons-in-law were also THS students (Stuart and Jeff)
• And now my nephews, Will and Tim – Will has moved on to college but Tim is still there, keeping up the family tradition

Tuesday 2^nd October

I suppose everyone is wondering how Emma is going at Chickenfeed.  Chickenfeed, in case you don’t live in Tasmania and haven’t been exposed to its SHOUTY presence, is a bright red discount shop.  Where everything is CHEAP.  And where everything you buy is likely to fall apart very swiftly…Emma, Pete’s lovely young long-term tenant in West Hobart, is a brick.  Chickenfeed is not her spiritual home but she is fiercely loyal and protective of the shop. 

I often walk through on my way from here to there – it is a very convenient thoroughfare, our mid-town SHOUTY Chickenfeed.  Last week there was beautiful Emma at the register, looking angry and distressed and waving her arms most expressively as she talked into an internal phone.  Later at Pete’s I asked her what had been going on.  She was most indignant; she had seen a woman with a $4.29 bottle of cordial in her pocket just walking out without paying!!  Emma tried to call security on the loudspeaker but nobody came quickly enough and the THIEF got away with her bottle of cordial. 

I actually think most employees would just turn a blind eye… the sort of people who steal from Chickenfeed are usually of the more scary variety… Recently Emma very politely asked to check a customer’s bag – she knew they had stashed away all sorts of treasures, probably at least $7.38 worth of goodies!!  They turned on her and shouted, told her to fuckoff, and one of them spat at her…

Not worth it, Em…