Adventuring in Australia with Tackless II

March 20-23, 2009 – Part Two -- The Two Captains Become Two Campers

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:52:00 +0000

In the local Aboriginal dialect, Mudgee means "nest in the hills," which turned out to be fairly apt as we drove south into the long Cudgegon valley. Said to be a three and a half hour drive from Sydney, the region has all the ingredients to make it a desirable weekend getaway for urbanites. The town center has lovely old buildings, dating from the 1850s when the area experienced a gold rush, in which today thrive artsy boutiques and cafes side-by-side with all the businesses of a modern Aussie town. Mudgee's wine industry was established at about the same time as the gold rush by German immigrants and although the region is now famous for its chardonnays, there are lots of other varietals for one to try at any of the forty "cellar doors". And we did. But I get ahead of myself.

Don and I arrived a day ahead of Steve and Rachel. We set up the tent in a pleasant, maple-shaded caravan park right in town, and set out in the afternoon to explore the main street, pick up a little something for dinner, and get Don a haircut. The town was gearing up for the weekend's big event, a film festival out at one of the wineries on Saturday night, which explained why Steve and Rachel had had a hard time finding accommodations.

Don and I had never done the winery thing. Our knowledge of wine goes only a little beyond the basics of red and white, and more practically usually focuses on bottles or boxes! Saturday morning, we poured over the pages of wineries in the Mudgee regional magazine trying to decipher how one goes about it. I mean where do you start? We ended up putting ourselves in the hands of the local "I" center host who sent us off to the Pieter Van Gent Winery and Vineyard which offered a "spit on the floor" indoctrination on Saturday mornings. We called and spoke to a sexy voice named Luciano to see if there was still space available, and he said, "Come now." It seemed like a good way to get a start on things before Steve and Rachel arrived midday.

There are vineyards and wineries and cellar doors, but not all proprietors do all three. The Pieter van Gent operation did. The winery and cellar were set under some trees right amidst the grape vines. We were welcomed by two unexpectedly young men, one of whom was Luciano of the sexy Italian voice, who turned out to be the assistant winemaker. Luciano was looking a little worse for wear, but we didn't find out until later that it was because they had harvested four tons of grapes the day before and had had to load them into the crushing vat without the use of their normal forklift! Luciano took us outside to show us a vat of freshly crushed red grapes, in the first day of fermenting, which emitted a most heavenly aroma.

The juice is then strained, mixed with yeast, and put into 300-liter oak barrels. There followed an explanation of the different yeasts used for various wines and of two different kinds of oak barrels: French and American. The American ones are made from raw wood and impart a more "aggressive" flavor, while the French oak is aged two years first. About this time we were joined by another couple just as Luciano started extracting tastes of young wine cloudy with yeast from different barrels.

From the keg room we moved into the cellar tasting area. Let me remind you that it was barely ten in the morning, but we proceeded to sample pretty near every one of about sixteen of the wineries products, from their famous Chardonnays, through some reds, straight into their equally famous Mudgee White Port. They even had a spiced vermouth I thought intriguing. The young fellows produced an endless supply of tasting glasses, and let me tell you, nary a drop ended up on any floor.

We tottered out to the car (having boughttwo bottles), and managed to dial the phone and determine that Steve and Rachel were just moments away from their nearby B&B. Somehow the Grey Nomad conveyed us to the correct location. Hopefully no one was watching. It was quickly decided, after greetings and hugs, that lunch would be a prudent next move! We ended up at the Blue Wren Winery's pleasant café and spent about two hours there sobering up while catching up. (The process involved a nice luncheon and some Mudgee ales and a couple glasses of their Merlots!)

Readers may recall that Steve and Rachel were at Vuda in Fiji at the same time Tackless II's paint job was happening. Their boat Apogee was also on the hard, awaiting the installation of a new engine, a project in the hands of Baobab Marine who just didn't seem to be able to get around to it. As it turned out, Steve's employer had once again offered him work he couldn't turn down, so it wasn't the disaster it might have been. And as that turned out, it was just as well they were in Australia rather than out cruising because Steve's Dad was found to have lung cancer and Rachel was able to be with him throughout the duration of his illness while Steve commuted between Sydney and Perth. A tough year for them, this weekend was one of their first getaways together since his passing.

We spent the remains of the afternoon visiting three other wineries, one specializing in French varietals, one in Iberian Peninsula varieties (Spanish and Portuguese), and one in Italians. We were much more restrained in this second go around, but all voted the DeLusso Estate's Italian reds our favorite. After our elegant lunch, we did a more homely dinner at one of the town's pubs. Unfortunately, Steve and Rachel's dinners were served about forty minutes after ours, a situation that is always irritating.

Certainly a highlight of our time with Steve and Rachel in Mudgee was as their guests at the B&B's sumptuous breakfast the next morning. Called the Myan Breezes Guesthouse, the house was a lovely modern estate with six rooms, surrounded by gardens and a vista across the valley. The hosts, Michael and Ruth, turned out to be former cruisers themselves, and so made an exception in our case allowing us as non-guests to join Steve and Rachel for breakfast. Our table commanded the premium view out the window, and the meal began with fresh brewed coffee and fresh fruit salad (with wild blackberries!) with yogurt, all ready at precisely the moment we arrived. Then we had a plateful of eggs, Aussie style bacon rashers, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes, garnished with sprigs of thyme, and home baked toast. It was altogether heavenly. I know we spend a lot of time talking about food, but, you know, when it's good, it's worth celebrating!

After breakfast we drove in two cars east to the village of Rylstone, gateway to Dunn's Swamp, a campground in the foothills of the Wollemi National Park on the west side of the Blue Mountains. We paused for a coffee in a small café with two friendly couples that rode in on their motorcycles. They pulled a table together with theirs so we could chat about their bikes – a BMW 1200RT and a Honda 1300ST – and about the famous Ulysses motorcycle club of which they were all members. The Ulysses Club has a minimum age of forty (for junior members) and claims a motto of "Growing old disgracefully," but they are a pretty upstanding group. I point this out because during this whole month Aussie outlaw biker clubs have been in the headlines daily for an ongoing gang war erupting in public places around Sydney. The Ulysses bikers are like us: "boomer zoomers" enjoying the riding for the riding's sake.

Dunn's Swamp was reached by another long, dusty dirt road. The remote campground is situated on a sinuous waterway created by a dam down river to provide, we understand, a steady water supply for a nearby cement works. We were concerned that the "swamp" might be as dry as Yarrie Lake had been, since bodies of water seem to be having a tough time surviving in Oz. We worried for naught, as the lake snaked away through yet another striking gorge, this one composed of limestone "pagoda" formations.

What was unexpected was the crowd! No place we had previously stopped had more than a handful of campers. The sites here were packed, and what empty sites there were were mostly "closed for native plant rejuvenation". Hoping most of the crowd would leave by evening, we parked the car without setting up and took off on a short walk along the lakeside path. Rachel is a great photographer and the winding lake and the unusual pagoda rock formations made great subjects. We also scared up a pair of lyrebirds, large birds reminiscent of roadrunners. While tracking them through the rocks, there suddenly came a great crash. Whipping around we caught a most embarrassed possum who had either fallen out of his tree or whose branch had broken off under him.

The good thing about arriving Sunday afternoon was the guys with the watersports concession were still there. Closed during the week during the off-season, on weekends they run a river cruise on a pontoon boat and rent out a fleet of canoe-kayak hybrids. We caught them in time to work a deal for use of a canoe on Monday, else we would have been up Dunn's creek without a paddle. (Sorry, couldn't resist!) They asked if we could swim, and we answered, hell yes, and licensed captains, to boot. They said, okay, you run the cruises and leave us the money. Unfortunately, they were just kidding!

Saying goodbye to Steve and Rachel that afternoon was the first farewell in Australia that we pretty much knew was going to be final. It was rather sobering. They have been in our lives for three years. We were very grateful they were willing to make the drive up to see us.

As hoped for, the campground gradually cleared out through the afternoon. Don and I stalked the campsites trying not to miss the ideal one. There were lots of tent sites networked into the woods and rock formations as well as along the water's edge, but we didn't want to get too far from the car where all our clothes and food would stay stashed and we didn't want a major midnight hike to a loo. We would have liked to pick a site down by the water, but several large groups lingered to the last minute, so we ended up picking a spot up the hill along the road where we figured it would be easiest for Mike and Kathleen to spot us if they made it in.

This was our first night bush camping on our own…and it was quite inconvenient without Matilda, because the campground was one of the ones with no picnic tables. We muddled through a pasta supper, and we did manage our own campfire, but the evening was marred by the crying of an unhappy child late into the night. We admit to un-grandparent-like thoughts. The next morning, we simply climbed out of the tent and into the car and drove down to a water-side picnic table to make coffee and breakfast.

How beautiful the "swamp" was in the morning mist. It was quite chilly, and we huddled around our mugs in all our clothes. Our cooking activity quickly drew the attentions of the local bush hens, a chicken-like bird with deep black and blue feathers and red legs and heads, and they amused us with their stalking. We were quite surprised then to see one fly across the water, although its water landing was essentially a belly flop.

We decided a brisk walk would warm us up so we set off down the trail for the pagoda formations. A short while and a little scrambling later, we were high above the gorge with a stunning view.

Later we ventured out in one of the plastic canoe-yaks. In the morning we paddled left a couple of kilometers down the twists and turns of the gorge to the dam, keeping our eyes peeled all the while for the elusive platypus. (Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the camera!) Not only was there no platypus, but, surprisingly there seemed very little wildlife around at all. Not even obnoxious cockatoos. In the afternoon, after several hours reading in chairs which we'd carted to a waterside campsite (by the time we were done we pretty much used the whole park!), we went for another paddle upstream, where it does finally become a little swampy. Swamp in this case, is tall dense grasses, gradually filling in the watercourse, but this direction also gave some great views of waterside rock formations.

As the afternoon waned the skies grew threatening, and we had a stiff paddle back to the campground. I landed Don on the nearest beach so he could dash up and close up the tent. When he got there, Matilda was squeezed into our niche and Mike and Kathleen were just zipping us up. Whew! We were back in the hands of professionals!

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March 11-20, 2009 – Part One--The Two Captains Become Two Campers

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 12:03:00 +0000

Australia is a huge country, and like the US, touring one corner does not count for seeing the whole of it. We did NOT see Uluru (Ayer's Rock), Alice Springs, Tasmania, Darwin, the Great Barrier Reef, the Kimberlies or Perth – all destinations on our wish list. BUT, our month crisscrossing the countryside behind Mike and Kathleen of Content in their campervan Matilda, did give us an amazing sampling. Obviously, we will have to come back.

Our departure was delayed first by Kathleen being laid up with a bad bout of sciatica. Kathy is a fit and active woman, but she and Mike had just spent a couple of months in the boat yard rebuilding and refitting their two wooden masts (they ended up replacing their mizzen with a new aluminum one), literally backbreaking work in the hot Aussie sun. As she began to bounce back through a combination treatment of muscle relaxants and exercises, we were delayed yet again by late-season Cyclone Hamish running towards us off the Queensland coast. The one good thing about a southbound Queensland cyclone is that the dangerous semi-circle is on the seaward side…as long as it stays offshore and doesn't turn inland. The forecast had possible tracks that included Moreton Bay, the bay where Scarborough Marina perches on a point, but although it brought several days of strong blustery winds and rain, causing old T2 to heel in her slip, it fortunately never did get here. At that point we had delayed so many times for one thing or another, we were actually thinking of taking he tent and mattress back to the store. But, finally the cyclone doubled back on itself and fizzled, allowing us to finally hit the road Thursday the 11th, both vehicles packed to the brim.

I don't think we have properly introduced you to our Aussie wonder car. It's a 1990 silver Toyota Camry four-door sedan, and it is a jewel. Don calls it the Four-wheel Harley and I call it the Grey Nomad, the nickname here for Australia's campervaning retirees. In the trunk we had a carton of pots, pans, plates and utensils from the boat; a borrowed one-burner camp stove; a carton of food; a borrowed cooler for food; a crate of leftovers from our booze locker; a dishpan, assorted sponges and dishtowels; a bag of blue tarps leftover from Fiji; a dust pan and a fly swatter. In the back seat, we each had one of our roller duffle cases, a bag of books, a computer, two camp chairs that we have been carrying since St. Thomas, our brand-new untried tent, a double self-inflating camping mattress, and a bag with two pillows, two summer-weight blankets, and a set of dark green sheets that used to be our charter sheets. Oh, yes, two foul weather jackets and an umbrella… just in case. In the front seat were a road atlas, a campground guide, a Lonely Planet, two water bottles, a mini-inverter to charge 110v gizmos from the cigarette lighter, and a large bag of Aussie gorp – a mix of nuts, dried fruit, and yogurt-covered somethings.

Our first day's drive took us southwest from Brisbane on the Cunningham Highway through lovely rolling countryside dotted with horse farms. It's Fall here, and the fields were deep in yellow grasses dotted by glades of tress. I'm told that most all the trees you see in Australia are some variety of gum, but the only ones I recognized are the white eucalypts with the peeling bark. Then the road began to climb steeply up the Great Dividing Range. We had plenty of time to appreciate the views as we discovered that Matilda goes uphill even slower than the Grey Nomad. The tops of the mountain were wrapped in wet and mist as we climbed with sheer crags on the left side and bellbirds bong-bonging away in the adjacent rainforest.

We came down quickly enough out of the cool and drizzle into a terrain of grass prairie and dry forests. We were bound for one of Mike and Kathleen's favorite parks in the hills just over the state border into New South Wales near a town called, of all things, Texas! Around 3:30pm, though, in the midst of a stretch of woods, Mike decided we wouldn't make it before dark and turned off the pavement down an unmarked dirt track! We followed tentatively well away from the road until Mike rounded up into a gap in the trees.

Welcome to bush camping! Of course, all Mike and Kathy had to do was pop their top and they were home. The Two Captains,…err the two novice campers, had to put together their tent for first time! Mike is a very mechanical do-it kind of guy, so he had to have a finger in the job. But I must point out that the boys' secret weapon in assembling the construction of poles, netting and nylon was having someone willing to read the instructions: Namely me!

Leaving Don to pound in the last of the tent pegs, Mike set off with a shovel to dig the latrine. The Content-ers carry a folding toilet seat which is a very handy thing to have. With the addition of one of our tarps and a roll of TP, we had the nicest facility of the whole trip. What's not to like about a loo with a view?

Before departure, Kathy and I had done a whirlwind tour through Woolie's (Woolworths is one of Australia's major supermarket chains) in the course of which I happily learned we would not be eating "rough." For our first dinner, I sliced and diced as Kathy whipped up a one pot meal of pork chops with mushroom sauce and rice along with corn on the cob, while Mike built a campfire from the wood Don collected.

Matilda the campervan is a mighty nice asset. She is a 1988 whitish, diesel Nissan Urvan, a slightly longer than normal pop-top van, fitted out with a sink and counter and propane fridge behind the driver with a swing-out cabinet for pots and pans fitted with a two burner stove and broiler on top behind the passenger seat. While Kathy stood at the stove and sink, I could do my chopping at a swivel table while sitting in the seat that would later convert to their bed. With 12-volt lighting, it was a cozy place to work.

Dinner and a toddy or two around the campfire set the routine for all subsequent nights. We listened to a lot of jaw-dropping stories about the off road jeeping our gurus used to do in California's rugged Sierra mountains or in the wilds of Baja. Many of the tales involved vertical ascents by jeep up places I'm not sure Don or I could get by foot! As the fire crackled, we could hear but not see the occasional traffic on the road beyond the trees. Aussie drivers, even the huge double truckers, avoid driving at night because the kangaroos are nocturnal. We were disappointed not to see any wildlife that night, but there was bird chatter at sundown, and a full moon above the treetops.

We slept fairly well that first night, getting used to being on the ground. The hard part, of course, is how far up you have to get, to get up…especially in the middle of the night! I'm not sure I didn't feel more "out there," bare-butted in uncharted woods, than I ever felt on the high seas! I was very grateful for the Content-ers' seat of ease.

One doesn't awake in Oz to the sweet twitter of birdsong. Day starts with the inane laughter of the kookaburra (a kingfisher species who has lost its way to the water) and is followed by the screeching of cockatoos, the squawking of various parrots, and the complaining of crows. The crows here go "Ahn, Ahn ahn, awwwwwww." Very loudly.

After coffee and egg and sausage burritos (oh, YUM!) we struck camp and continued on through Texas, which is appropriately named as we were now in the midst of cattle country. At the small town of Ashford we turned up a dirt road that ran twenty-some kilometers back into hills increasing dotted with granite boulders that would do the Baths proud. Every so often the road would clatter over a cow and sheep grate or dip down through a gully with water in it. Our one wrong turn rewarded us with the sight of our first two emus, ostrich-like birds, making a getaway through the woods.

Lemon Tree Campground in Kwiambal National Park was our first official campground. The camping area was loosely defined on a grassy glade we had to share with a "herd" of kangaroos who sprawled lazily on the grass they munched. Aussie camp-sites are defined by a parking notch and a fire ring and one or more drop toilets (aka outhouses). Matilda would stay in the notch while we pitched our tent on the grass. At the bottom of the slope was a gorge of granite boulders through which ran a river so lazy we couldn't tell which way it was flowing. The midday temps were so hot that a swim was in order. The cola-colored water was surprisingly cool, especially if you stuck your feet down.

We indulged in a lazy afternoon, reading, napping and kangaroo watching. After a year and a half in the country, Mike has become quite knowledgeable in the birdlife and introduced us to our first butcher bird (so named because they are meat eating) and the willy-wagtail who boldly make their way into your camp. Aussie birds, he explained, are often named by obvious traits. In the evening the bush-tailed possums came to check out our pasta dinner, their red eyes glowing in the reflected light, their silent vigil on a tree limb above occasionally jarred by screechy territorial disputes.

The next morning we all went for an "early" hike. Well, it was supposed to be early, but Don and I slept so well snugged together against the morning chill that we actually didn't hear the "whizzz-bang" that announces the egress of Mike and Kathy from the campervan! After slurping down one coffee, we set out on the track to "The Junction". We'd been hoping with an early start we might spy a timid platypus in the river, but instead we disturbed a huge flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos that set up a ruckus. We learned later that the cockatoos actually post a watch while the rest graze!

The first leg of the hike, about 1.5km, led to a string of overlooks above a huge gorge. Clearly there have been times when a great deal more water rushed through here. Still fighting her sciatica, Kathy grudgingly let Mike turn back to camp at the halfway point, while Don and I continued on down. The trail led up and down and over great boulders another few kilometers to the Junction proper. WOW. How I wish I were a painter like my parents were! The path led down a bank of rock to a valley where two river beds come together in a granite jumble. White cockatoos flew across at eye level from one piney hill to another, and there was no sign of mankind except for the big spots of white paint on the rock that marked the way down.

By the time we trudged back into camp, M & K had another luxurious breakfast ready, this time one right out of our charter menu: bagels with smoked salmon and all the fixin's! The food must have smelled good because we had a visit from a lace monitor lizard, an Australian cousin to the Komodo dragon.

The next morning, after packing up, we detoured to the other section of the park and took the trail there down to MacIntyre Falls. This would be the "other" river course that feeds into the Junction. The actual trail was short, but it led us right down onto the sculpted rock. We spent an hour or more clambering over the backs of huge boulders to get where we could see the falls and pools cupped deep in the granite gorge. It happened to be Sunday, and I've never been in a cathedral more majestic!

Being Sunday, Don was foiled in his hope to score for his mid-morning snack an authentic Aussie meat pie from the bakery in Ashford that claimed to have the best meat pies in the country. Things are pretty quiet in small Aussie towns on Sundays. The main streets are like something out of the Wild West, parallel strings of flat store fronts that always includes at one end or the other a commercial hotel with decorative wrought iron across the façade and a pub. Parking is either in the center of the street or diagonal or both, but always stern to.

Thwarted in our quest for pies, we drove on south to Inverill, a much bigger town with a Woolies where we could replenish our stores. Our big score here was a polyester quilt for $22. Don was skeptical that there would be space for it in the car, but that quilt would soon be our salvation!

Before leaving Inverill we collected a whole slew of tourist brochures on places to go from the local "i" center. Most Aussie communities have one. We also whipped up some sandwiches in the town park where the entertainment highlight was the Lion's Club "Exceloo", a fully-automated, space-age rest room. You push a button, the door slides open, you step in, the door slides shut, and a voice tells you you have up to ten minutes! Then the muzak kicks in! TP is dosed out like an ATM receipt, the toilet flushes itself, the basin dispenses soap and water and blow dry automatically as you pass your hands by, and, if you're are lucky, the door opens again on your command! Beam me up, Scotty! I actually said that as a teenager rode past on his bike, and he looked at me like, "say what?"

Mike and Kathleen had warned us that they were prone to wandering, so it wasn't a real surprise when we swung back east into the mountains of the Great Dividing Range for our next campsite. Our destination was another of their favorites, the Mann River Campground. We climbed eastward across the New England Highway through Glenn Innes, where, by golly, the town's street trees of a distinct maple persuasion were turning fall colors. We turned off on a side road that led through deep woods and then plunged in tight switchbacks down, down, down to the Mann River valley. (Don and I wondered if Matilda would be able to climb back out again.) Rock wallabies perched on boulders by the roadside, while fern fronds attested to our nearness to the rainforest, and at one bend, Mike came to a halt in order to collect wood for the campfire from fallen limbs along the roadside!

At the base of the hill, the campground opened up in a meadow along a babbling river. Perhaps a dozen sites were strung out along the bank beneath tall pines, although there was just one drop toilet set on a rise a fair hike from the river. A couple of campers were there before us, but we got a big area to ourselves, set up and then went for a swim in the swimming hole downstream. It was as the sun was setting and we were grilling and assembling cheeseburgers, that we noticed the lightning to the north. By the time it was dark and the camp fire was blazing, we could hear thunder, even though the sky overhead was bright with stars.

By morning it was gray and COLD! Nobody was laughing at my quilt now! The thunder was now coming from the south, and by the time coffee was ready we were all huddled under the awning Mike had providentially set up as the rain began. It rained hard, and got colder and colder. Even Kathy's hot breakfast couldn't ward it off, so eventually we all climbed into our respective vehicles, running the engines for heat! We spent the whole morning, reading behind steamy windows. At lunch time we emerged, and under the awning I started a pot of veggie soup. About the time we finished, a patch of blue had begun to take shape in the south. Then a frontline of clear sky assembled and slowly but surely pushed the cellulite-puckered rain clouds firmly off to the northwest. How bizarre! We went from freezing cold to hot and sweaty within an hour!

Don had checked the tent several times during brief breaks in the rain, and it seemed to be doing fine. However, as the blue sky rolled in we discovered a puddle had formed somehow and wet the bedding, so we spent a good part of the afternoon stringing clotheslines and hanging things up to dry. Afterwards we strolled down the dirt road that once upon a time was the major thoroughfare of the region between the coast at Grafton and the hinterland behind the mountains. Kangaroos were everywhere in great bands.

That evening the stars were very bright, at least until the fog rolled in. It got so thick, it was hard to find our way to the loo. Don and I remade our bed and snugged down under our blankets and the quilt. "This," Don said to me, "was a good idea." In the morning it was Mike and Kathleen in the van who were freezing! Was it a coincidence that our route took us back through Inverill and back through Woolies? Maybe, but Kathleen came out with their own $22 special!

Looking for a drier option for the night, we pushed due west again. We came rapidly down out of the mountains, through the rolling prairie, all the way out into flat, flat farmland. Our goal was Moree, famous for its hot springs. Here we set up in Gwydir Carpark and Thermal Pools, a regular campervan park, complete with showers, toilets, laundry and even a kitchenette. We set up the van and tent on our assigned strip of lawn that we belatedly realized was directly under the security light! Don layered up several tarps over the tent's rain fly which may not have been pretty but did knock down the illumination level inside the tent from broad day to at least twilight.

We hustled into our bathing suits and made our way over to the pools. There were four very large round pools each a different temperature. It is a rare treat for yachties to immerse ourselves in hot water! For Kathy's persisting sciatica it was heaven, and I won't deny it felt pretty good to these two captains. We had our own share of sore muscles and stiffness from the hikes and sleeping on the ground, although we can't say that following the prescription of plunging into the cold pool last did anything for us.

Moree was definitely an Aussie tourist destination. The park was full of trailers and pop-ups, and the pools were well attended. Some of the accents in the pools were so thick that we just nodded and smiled without a clue of what had been said! No foreigners but we were there. However, in the kitchenette that night we did meet a fellow towing an American amphibious duck, essentially an amphibious jeep built by TKTK for World War II. Restoring the war relic was this fellow's hobby, and he was on his way back from TKTK, where disappointingly his baby had failed to run and so missed the parade.

From Moree we headed south to Narrabi to check out the Australia Telescope, consisting in this location of 6 22-meter radio telescopes. There's an Aussie movie Don and I once saw on a plane called "The Dish", about the Aussie telescope that received Armstrong's first words from the moon. That wasn't here, however. That, I believe was the Parkes scope, somewhat to the south. However, despite being set out in a hot, fly-plagued savanna, it was a pretty informative display. The telescopes, however, were idle for service.

We had thought we might stop over night out at nearby Yarrie Lake, but we barely survived a sandwich there. In the midst of hot red-clay country and thanks to Australia's ten-year drought, there is no lake at Yarrie Lake anymore. Campsites ring the dry, grass-filled depression with nice concrete pads, picnic tables and steel shelters, but the flies were horrendous. We packed up as fast as we could and beat a fast retreat south.

It was a great relief when the road rose up from the dry plain into a huddle of mountains called the Warrumbungles. How quickly things can change! The landscape coming into the pretty town of Coonabarabran lifted and rolled with nice forests and billboards for the world's largest virtual solar system. It seems Coonabarabran (don't you just love saying that!) is the "Astronomy Capital of Australia". The virtual solar system places the planet billboards around the countryside at appropriate scaled distances from the Siding Spring Observatory, which serves as the "Sun" from its mountaintop in the State Park. In the course of the next week or so I think we encountered all of the planets except Saturn!

We bypassed Coonabarabran's in-town caravan park in favor of the Warrumbungle State Park. (I also love saying Warrumbungle!) It was quite a drive out through the steeply lumpy mountains, but we were rewarded with more emu sightings by the roadside! The park's visitor center was closed when we arrived so we continued up to the campground on the hilltop and selected two side-by-side sites with a million dollar view of the surrounding mountains.

This state park was somewhat more in the fashion of US parks with four camping areas to choose from, (two with powered sites and one for actual big-rig RVs, which are fairly rare here), but there was no more than a handful of campers in the whole place. Again, instead of placing picnic tables at each site, this campground had a big eating area with four grills (each with two side burners for pots) and about eight tables. Up the hill was a service block with hot showers, toilets and a washing-up area. It was a perfect place to grill the butterflied leg of lamb we'd found at Woolies! (BBQs in Australia are not what we Americans think of as grills; they are big flat griddles…which is just a little disappointing! Still the lamb was outstanding.) It was late when we finished up eating, and while the boys were up doing dishes and Kathy and I were packing up, we were startled to notice an owl sitting on the step watching us from about five feet away! Punch another hole in the wildlife card!

Warrumbungle State Park was another great wildlife spot. We were beset with noisy cockatoos in the morning that would try to land on a power wire and end up hanging upside-down, their wings flopping loosely. There was another lace monitor as well as six emu sightings, and at breakfast one morning, a kangaroo surprised us by coming right up to our chairs. Koalas, although said to be here, eluded us. (there's only so long you can walk with your head craned back!) Warrumbungle is most famous for an all-day hike to a formation known as The Bread Knife, but at 12-14km kilometers of steep walking, it was not a destination for Kathy's sciatica. We stuck instead to easy walks around the park…much to Kathy's obvious disgust (and our relief!)!

However, the Warrumbungles really came into their own at night. The air is so dry and clear, it's no wonder the area is the astronomy capital of the world. We could easily see the two Magellan clouds, distant galaxies that can only be seen from the southern Hemisphere, particularly suitable as I was reading a history of Magellan's voyage.

And so we were motivated to make a trip to the Siding Spring Observatory the next afternoon. As we climbed the approach road in the car (the backseat excavated of stuff to carry all four of us), we passed "Earth," "Venus," and "Mercury" all huddled relatively close to the "Sun". We were able to walk up to the observatory itself and see the inside work area from a glassed off visitor balcony. Of course, the dome was closed during the day, and tourists aren't allowed up at night when the scientists are at work. But they had a very extensive, quite sophisticated display that deserved a full day to take in, not a few hours in an afternoon. We were told that in town there is a small private observatory for tourists.

It is hard to believe that at this point we had been traveling barely ten days. With Mike and Kathy as mentors we had picked up the routine of camping quite readily. Now as we prepared to leave the Warrumbungles, we had decided to part ways for a while. We wanted to rendezvous with Steve and Rachel Phillips, our friends from Fiji, who are currently based in Sydney and who had pledged to drive out and meet up with us one weekend, while Mike and Kathleen had their own friends they wanted to visit in a different direction.

From the pile of brochures we'd collected at the "I" center, we picked the vineyard area of Mudgee on the West side of the Blue Mountains for our rendezvous with the Phillips. Steve and Rachel had found it on the map, found a B&B to book via the Internet and vowed to meet us. So, after we exited the Warrumbungles on at their southwest corner (after four more emu sightings!) we struck off on our own, driving for the first time without the white square of Matilda's backside in front of us.

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2 C Camping Update March 18 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:08:00 +0000

We are having a great time! We are so fortunate to have hooked up with old friends Mike and Kathleen of sv Content. Then are very experienced bush campers (as opposed to RV park camping) after spending their land lives exploring the Sierras in California. We have learned loads. We can set up our tent in about 15 minutes, and, after the purchase of a comforter at Woolies, we have been sleeping snug as bugs. And speaking of bugs, there haven't been THAT many. There HAVE been lots of kangaroos and wallabies, possum, and exotic (for us) birds: cockatoos, parrots, butcher birds, willy wagtails, etc, and we have seen some fabulous countryside. We have even survived a six hour deluge and thunderstorm...although I will admit we took refuge in the car and ran the heater for warmth! We will come back and add all the details when the trip is over. The camping life is not computer friendly!

10 March 2009 -- What the 2Cs Have Been Doing with Themselves in Oz

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:21:00 +0000

Nearly a month has gone by without an update here from the Two Captains. You probably figure that life in Mooloolaba as we’ve depicted it was so good that we’ve just settled down into an uneventful retirement routine. To some extent that is/was true. Our long 10K walks along the beach were the highlight of the day, the rest spent primping the boat so that she would be beautiful should someone come by to look at her. We made some local friends who entertained us at their homes or on their boats, we faithfully caught the Wednesday night cruiser dinner and the Sunday morning market in Maroochydore, and we were connected to the world via broadband Internet on the dock. Given the economy, it made for a quietly attractive lifestyle. It could have gone on indefinitely.

However, a couple of things happened that interrupted the flow. First, our visas came due, and although we applied for extensions on schedule, weeks went by without hearing from immigration. We were uncomfortable with taking off camping to parts unknown until the visa issue was resolved, and so we lingered. Next, the weather took a less friendly turn with hot days and regular rain showers, making our tenting plan less inviting. Finally, our three month deal with the Wharf Marina came to an end. Because the plan was/is to get out camping, it dawned on us that it really didn’t make sense to sign up for another three months at the most expensive marina around. And the month by month price was even worse. Don’t get me wrong. We don’t regret a penny we spent at the Wharf, what with its great situation and nice services.

But Mooloolaba is an hour and a half north of both our broker in Deception Bay and the Brisbane airport into which fly most Australian boat buyers. If we weren’t going to be on the boat, it made sense to move her closer to the action, especially as we could save a couple hundred bucks a month.

And so it turned out that our run down from Wide Bay Bar to Mooloolaba was not our last cruise in Tackless II after all! On Monday February 16th, we motored out the channel and turned right to putter down the coast to Scarborough. It was a lovely day with gentle seas but not enough wind to sail, although we put the sail up in hopeful anticipation. The Queensland coast of beautiful beach after beautiful beach unrolled as we aimed for Caloundra Head in order to slip into Moreton Bay the back way as it were.

Moreton Bay, like Hervey Bay was off of Bundaberg, is a wedge of water trapped between an offshore island and the mainland. In Moreton Bay, however, great long bars of sand have built up across the mouth making the ships heading for the port at Brisbane stick to confined channels. We had several big ships catch us up and pass us by, so we were happy to hug the coast. Caloundra was a neat looking town crammed in the lee of the head with the unexpected crags of the Glasshouse Mountains rising in the distance. From Caloundra we followed the deserted sandy shore of Bribie Island, another National Park, rounded the corner at Skirmish Point, and squeezed into Deception Bay, where moments after we gave up and dropped the mainsail, a sailing breeze came up.

Our first impressions of Scarborough Marina back in November when our friends Whisper and Procyon were here did not compare well with Mooloolaba. However, giving it a second chance has come good. Our slip near the end of the main dock is much quieter than the one at the Wharf, (except when the fisherman are launching or retrieving their runabouts at the launch ramp right behind us.) It is less lit at night, which makes for better sleeping, and there is a nice roster of cruising friends and acquaintances around. Scarborough biggest negative is that it is a bit remote, but, since we now own a car, that has proved less of an issue.

Getting the car down from Mooloolaba was a bit of a chore, requiring several train and bus connections and a few hours travel. But since then we have made four or five runs back and forth to change storage lockers for one closer, and to follow up on various appointments we’d made up there.

Our morning walk, which we had thought would be the biggest sacrifice of the move, has actually been a non issue. The Queenslanders sure like their waterfront parks and Scarborough is no exception. Pleasant measured walkways lead from the marina, past playgrounds and a work-out station just like the one in Mooloolaba, through local neighborhoods to just about as far as you could want to go, and because Scarborough is a quieter residential area to Mooloolaba’s resort pulse, those sidewalks are relatively deserted. No more dodging on-comers! We even found a little neighborhood café run by a spry old Greek gentleman Dimitri, with whom we can pursue our coffee research.

Even our social life got off to a great start by getting in on a jazz concert in nearby Redcliffe where fellow cruiser John of Gingi sat in with his horn with a combo at a local RSL club (Retired Service League) which led to drinks with a local group of sailors at the Moreton Bay Boat Club. The Aussies dearly love their social clubs, whether it’s a surf club, a bowls club, a boat club, a sports club or whatever, all of which seem to have cheap booze, affordable meals and pokie machines (gambling is big here).

So I guess a little to our surprise we have really enjoyed being here! However, the one thing that has been a disappointment is that there has been almost no activity on the boat. Our broker has dropped by a number of times and she insists that our boat is generating more interest than any other listing. We see lots of boat shoppers roving the docks looking at boats for sale with the Marina’s in-house broker. And boats have been selling! It’s a puzzlement.

Because we are ready to sell! Don, of course, has been ready for months, but I have been dragging my feet, hoping, I guess, that Don would have a change of heart or that there would be some kind of new revelation. And perhaps there has been, in the guise of our plans for our future. In this economy, the spring feeding our cruising kitty has contracted and these two old captains can’t come home and just rove the country in our RV like we planned. We need to create positive cash flow, so Don has been researching opportunities since we’ve been here. And we have pretty much decided to go with the mobile espresso cafe business. Guess it’s all that coffee we drank in Mooloolaba’s cafes. We have actually started the process back in the States! It’ll be a new adventure.

We’ll tell you more about all that later, but having made the decision, we’ve made reservations. Yes, the Two Captains are returning to the US…..on one-way tickets. We will depart Brisbane on April 15, leaving Tackless II in the hands of the brokers. It will probably work out much better than way, without me and my emotional second thoughts clouding the cosmic synergy.

So, now, having left it to the eleventh hour, we are indeed going to take off for a quick look-see around the countryside. It won’t be the full-fledged campervan tour we had imagined, but a briefer sampling that will fuel our fantasies until we can come back here and do it right. We are taking off tomorrow with our friends Mike and Kathleen of Content, to follow their experienced lead and to pitch our squeaky new tent in the lee their campervan. We’ll try to update from the road.

Tackless II is for Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:50:00 +0000

(Note: This post will always be on top! Check below it for our latest updates!)

Tackless II is FOR SALE in Australia!!! See the full specs

After a nearly ten year cruise from the Virgin Islands to Australia (see our South Pacific Blog and the main website www.thetwocaptains.com for all the details), this fully-equipped cruising boat is ready to continue on with her next owner!

She will be going on the market officially here in Australia in a few weeks. Follow the link to see all her specs.

090212 - The Tragic Fires in Victoria

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:33:00 +0000

WE have received a few emails wanting to be sure that we are nowhere near the horrible bush fires that have claimed so many lives in the Australian State of Victoria. We are not. We are in Queensland, nearly one thousand miles away. Of course the reports in the papers, the TV news and the Internet have been with us for days now, faces of complete families with young children like our own - lost, twenty year-old sisters who stayed to try and save their horses - lost, old people and even injured koalas. Every year America has fires like these in California and other western states, but somehow we do not have the same scale of loss of life. It is their stay and protect policy, the Aussie spirit of protecting hard-won property. Admirable but disastrous this time. Our hearts are with their families.

February 5, 2009 – Adventuring in Coffee Land

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:55:00 +0000

When Don and I first arrived in Mooloolaba, we were bewitched by all the cafes on the Esplanade and stopped most days after the morning walk for a cappuccino, latte or flat white and a leisurely perusal of the morning papers. It was a very civilized luxury after our years in the Pacific. However, we really didn’t have a clue when ordering what was what, and had to ask repeatedly. I’m sure the young baristas thought we’d just landed from Mars.

How far we have come! At the moment, the leading idea for self-employment when we get back to the US is to own and operate our own mobile espresso and smoothie truck. This would be the kind of thing that sets up at events for anywhere from a day to two weeks. Don has been doing reams of research, filling in the blanks of a business plan, and we even have a truck in mind. We’ve been in touch with a fellow in Florida who has one, and he has been incredibly generous with mentoring information and encouragement.

The other day we were at a business in nearby Kunda Park called Beverage Marketing, the local distributor of a US product called Dr. Smoothie that our mentor had recommended. Dr. Smoothie will provide product samples to people considering the business, and they kindly extended that courtesy to us, even though our business would be on the other side of the world. The showroom was full of fancy espresso machines (of which my sister’s home model was the smallest!), and an Aussie couple was getting lessons from a slim Asian man in how to make a proper cappuccino. We sidled over and watched over their shoulders.

It turned out that the couple had just outfitted their own coffee truck (in Australia the popular model is a stand-outside set-up in a panel van), and they kindly invited us outside to have a look-see. In the course of all our standing around and chatting, we ended up with the instructor's card, and he with ours. And that night he called and offered us some private lessons.

So, Friday morning we climbed in our car and drove out to Nambour, a town about 20 minutes inland. The countryside was lush and lovely, with folded hills and valleys and houses with yards. We found Paul Chan in his cool and shady carport, beneath a house on stilts on the hillside. His big green professional espresso machine was set up on a stainless steel table with a fridge and all the paraphernalia at hand. we could hardly ask for a nicer learning environment.

Making espresso is a much more intricate process that we imagined. There is the type and age of the coffee beans as well as ambient conditions to consider when setting the grinders. The ground beans need to just right to allow the drip rate of 30 ml of water to fall within 22-27 seconds! This takes some experimentation the first time, and attentive adjustments subsequently. We learned how to measure and properly tamp the grounds in the portafilter (aka a group handle) and how to lock it in the machine to extract the espresso. After that we learned the art of volumizing milk (and not burning it or yourself…or others!) with the steamer wand, and then how to pour it out so as to make a cappuccino, flat white or latte.

It was a high caffeine morning for the two captains, but fortunately Paul’s wife just happened to whip up a scrumptious banana cake to help us get through! We spent at least an hour sitting on their deck discussing the fundamentals of a mobile business. Paul was a great resource as he once had four of his own.

An unanticipated highlight of the day was Paul’s four-year-old daughter Alicia who was not going to be persuaded to stay upstairs with her mom when such interesting strangers were at hand. Exactly the same age as Kai with much the same open personality, her distractions gave us a bonus dose of grandparenting. Not often can you bounce basketballs while you learn to make coffee!

February 1, 2009 - Sunday Drive

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 05:50:00 +0000

This morning after the Farmer's Market we took a drive up the coast a bit for coffee in Coolum Beach. It is a simpler stretch of coast, with smaller, less developed enclaves between acres of farmland. After coffee we walked the boardwalk that climbs the hill south of Coolum and took pictures of the sea.

January 26, 2009 – Australia Day

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:25:00 +0000

Australia Day is the holiday celebrating the arrival of the "First Fleet" at Sydney Cove. The "First Fleet" was not one of naval explorers but convicts sentenced to labor in penal colonies. Although conceived as a way to give convicts a second chance, it was a harsh life. And, as the morning paper pointed out, from the Aboriginals' point of view, the arrival of the First Fleet is not something to celebrate. Rather it foretold an end to their world.

However, today's Aussies don't think much about their beginnings any more, except perhaps on Australia Day. It is celebrated kind of like our Labor Day, yet another day for BarBies and going to the beach, but one marking the end of the school holidays. For this we will give thanks, as the crowds on the beach will thin out, but, more importantly, finding a parking place during the day will be possible again!

Our Australia Day was celebrated with a daysail aboard a 50' Fontaine Pajot catamaran. Our friend Tricky of Lionheart (reincarnated as Richard in his business guise) has become a partner is a new dealership for "pre-loved" catamarans. The FP 50', however, was a brand new, million-dollar boat! Apparently, taking the boats out is one of the perks!

The day started with rain and we thought our outing would be cancelled, but it fact as we maneuvered off the dock and out the channel, the sky cleared and we had nice easy conditions. We got the sails up, and sailed northward along the coast for an hour or so. If was grand! There is nothing to beat being out on the water with the wind in your hair. We all did our best to try out every lounging spot available on the boat. If the pup Dudley hadn't gotten seasick, we four might just have found ourselves back at Wide Bay Bar.

Just as well, we had to get back for the Barbie at the Yacht Club.

Apologies to the visual set: I forgot to take a camera!

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24 January 2009 -- On the Subject of Dogs

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 09:15:00 +0000

Dogs seem to be the subject of the week. Here is an email I just got from my cousin Patty with the newest member of their family

"We picked up Homer the afternoon after the inauguration from a breeder in New Hampshire. He's named after Doyle's favorite children's story "Homer Price," by Robert McCloskey. Homer is a 9-1/2 weeks old Corgi pup. This picture was taken Wednesday morning. He's already grown and has become a lot more mobile. No more shaky toddler steps. He's got us all wrapped around his puppy paw. Well, maybe not Tucker."

Homer has a tough act to follow with the recent passing of Patty and Doyle's first Corgi, Farley. Number two corgi, Tucker, is now the old man. The corgis provide visitors with great entertainment as they run through the fields of grass (or snow, depending on the season.) Don and I look forward to making Homer's acquaintance.

January 21, 2009 – A Big Dog Day for the Two Captains

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:37:00 +0000

WE PASSED! We passed! We passed! We passed!....We passed!

The termite doggie finally came to visit Tackless II at 7:30 in the morning, and she sniffed, and sniffed, and sniffed, and finally, waving her happy tail, pronounced us free of termites.

Not that there was really, truly any suspense, …but you never know. The termite inspection is a part of the process of importing a boat into Australia. A visit by a dog is not automatically required, but for a boat like Tackless II, 26 years old with an interior entirely of wood, there was no avoiding it. The moment the Quarantine inspector stuck his nose below last week and saw all the wood, he announced we would have to have the "Category II inspection", aka the termite dogs. Well, duh, we tried to tell you that from the start. It sure seems like they could have saved us the first hundred or so dollars and brought the dogs to begin with!

If it weren't for the cost (we are yet to be billed, but it is expected to be in the $800AUD range!), it is actually a pretty interesting experience. The dog handler is a contractor for the government. In our case it was John Elder who drove all the way up from Yamba in NSW to do our boat and two others (including our friends' just-sold Hallberg Rassey Whisper).

First the handler comes aboard and inspects the boat looking for evidence of termites…we're talking termite poop here, which is little round balls. Then, he went over all our wood with a moisture meter, not unlike was used during our bottom job. We were pleased to learn that Tackless II's wood was precisely where is should be! Whew!

Finally, John brought in Dolly from the parking lot. Dolly, a harrier, is one of three dogs he brought on the trip, (just in case one were to get carsick or something). Dolly, he told us, can find a swab of termite placed in an auditorium in three minutes! Incredibly, John didn't even open up any cupboard doors. While we sat out in the cockpit, John worked Dolly back and forth through the boat, tapping the walls for her to sniff.

With her tail fanning, it was kind of cute to watch, although we wondered what she would do if she found any.

Fortunately, we had to ask to find out. John says that, when she finds evidence, she will sit and put her paw on it! (I found a video on line from another company if you want to see how it is done; go to http://www.termitedetectioncanines.com/)

Dog #2 - Dudley

Not long after Dolly left, we had another doggy visit from our little buddy Dudley, this time with Tricky in tow.

Tricky, who is a new partner in a catamaran company, had a boat on our dock to check out, so he brought Duddles along and we puppy sat. If your face needs cleaning, we can recommend Dudley!

Dudley, who is half Staffordshire Terrier (aka pit bull) and half Maltese, has a somewhat humorous look. He is basically white, but showing through his sparse wispy white hair are enough black spots to give a Dalmatian pause!

His eyes are pink-rimmed on the outer edges and black on the inner, and when they close they make a checkerboard pattern! Even his paws are spotted pink and white, and he has a black spot onthe roof of his pink mouth! However every time I try to take the camera to him, he is not cooperative.

However, while visiting he had his first Skype experience when we got a call from the Wells in North Carolina, and we introduced him to Tikka, the all black Shih Tzu. I don't know what it means, but his attention wasn't engaged until my dignified brother-in-law Bob barked at him. Definitely should have gotten a picture of THAT!

Obama

All this doggie diversion is why we missed seeing the Inauguration live. Well, that and the fact that we got our days confused. We did spend much of the afternoon watching replays, and got to see the Leader of the Free World boogie at the Ball. I can't tell you how reassuring it is to have a President who can dance like a normal person!

Seriously, having read Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, I am primed to believe in the man. Watching the coverage of the crowds in the mall, the optimism was contagious. Don and I were both quite moved. And when Obama spoke his line about sixty years ago his father might not have been served in a restaurant there, I was moved to recall my first exposure to racial prejudice when I could not bring Lucy's daughter to D.C.'s Glen Echo Amusement Park. I simply could not understand it then, and I have never understood it since! I love what yesterday stood for.

Life in Mooloolaba

Life in Mooloolaba continues to be pleasant. We are itching to get out traveling, but we have had to wait for the quarantine and import issues to sort out and, this week, to get our applications for visa extension in. In the meantime Don has refurbished virtually all the interior varnish, and the boat is looking as beautiful inside as out. We are walking 6-8k every morning, hitting the Sunday morning farmers market, and catching the Wednesday night cruiser dinner. Oh, yes, and Don is burning up the Internet researching jobs and business opportunities for when we finally get back. We welcome suggestions.

January 7, 2009 – A Day Off on the Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:38:00 +0000

"A day off!" you snort. "A day off from what?"

I know it sounds to everyone like we live a life of leisure, but in fact, in between the adventures is a fair amount of work. It's just no one pays us for it. Plus work is both boring to write and read about. Lately the work has been on Tackless II's interior cosmetics, and once again, Don has been the main miracle worker and his media has been sandpaper, a little Golden Oak stain, and varnish. An experiment in touching up a corner looking a bit shabby produced such unexpectedly impressive results, that he has been working his way through the entire boat. Wow, what a difference! No one is going to be able to resist her!

So that's what the day off was from, and how it was spent was in the company of our across-the-dock neighbors, Rod and Sue. Rod and Sue live on a 70' powerboat named Idlewise. Idlewise is also a mature lady like Tackless II, but with very gracious interior spaces and an engine room to make us rag-boaters weep. After having up to 12 family members visiting over the holidays, Rod and Sue were ready for a break themselves, so they invited us to join them for a beach drive.

A beach drive is executed in a 4WD vehicle, which in Rod and Sue's case was a cushy Toyota Land Cruiser. Unlike America, where most of the coastline is developed, Queensland still has miles and miles and miles of natural shoreline. Our drive took place on the approximately 50km of beach we'd sailed past in November between Double Island Point on the north end and Noosa Head on the south.

The beach is backed by hills and cliffs of colored sand behind which is a wide wedge of preserved forest through which flows the Noosa River. It is part of the Great Sandy National Park which also includes all of Fraser Island, also renowned as a 4WD destination. Given unlimited time, we could have caught one of the ferries we'd seen at Inskip Point and continued driving another 75 miles right up the outside of Frasier.

It was a bright sunny day with a good swell running, and the turquoise waves were crashing close by on our right. We were not alone on the beach.

There were plenty of cars traveling at what feels like a breakneck pace in both directions. According to Rod, however, regular road rules apply, which means the speed limit is 50kph and northbound vehicles keep left. Of course, left is where the softer sand was, so things could get a little swishy when we'd pull left to give southbound cars room between us and the surf. Clearly Rod was eating this up. He's been doing this for years and never wavered in his assault!

We stopped twice to explore sand canyons and scramble up through soft stuff to reach various vantage points for photographs.

The sand got very hot with every step away from the water. Although we had worn swimsuits ("swimmers" in Aussie-speak), the sea was rather rough-looking plus there was evidence a blue bottles, a small, blue stinging jelly fish. Rod demonstrated the Aussie sport of stamping on the dried jellies' bodies, which pop just as if they were bubble wrap.

At various stretches along the way were avid fishermen working the surf as well as clusters of campers, their tents pitched above the water line.

Most camps looked like they'd been there a while. Rod explained how the campers could dig a pit in the sand a the base of the cliffs and collect fresh water! Indeed in many spots along the beach there was enouch fresh water seeping out that the waves became discolored. Every camp site would sport a distinctive flag to facilitate residents finding their own tents. Some groups got quite creative, bringing kiddie wading pools to sit in, solar panels, satellite dishes, etc. The best was an elaborate group "beach bar" complete with pool table.

The beach ended abrupt at rocky Double Island Point where several vehicles were parked for swimming in a little cove.

One can climb up to the lighthouse if one has the energy, or one can purchase Magnum ice cream bars from an enterprising vendor who has been driving the beach with his wares for 20+ years! Our timing was perfect, because the vendor sold us our snacks, and when we turned around, he was gone!

We caught up with him shortly at the track that leads across the Double Island peninsula to the protected bay on its backside. This would be the anchorage that southbound boats can choose to stop at after crossing the Wide Bay Bar. That day it was very placid, and a bar of sand had built up to make an enclosed swimming pool.

After our swim it was determined that the tide was advancing enough that we'd better not attempt to drive back home on the beach. We did have to backtrack enough on the much shortened beach to get on a track that led out through the park to the village of Rainbow Beach. Every time we entered or exited one of these tracks to and from the beach, my heart was in my throat, because, of course, we had to cross through the band of deep soft sand at the top of the beach. We saw several vehicles stalled up to their bottoms in the sand, the driver out shoveling. Then, as you slew your way onto the track, there's the next scary moment of sliding into your "lane" as defined by stumps of telephone pole dividers. Man you could do some damage if you miscalculate.

Speaking of miscalculation, we weren't far up the track to Rainbow Beach when we encountered a ute (Aussie for truck) flipped onto its back.

The incident had just happened, and two young guys were standing around looking dazed. That they were standing was the good news. It seems they had been traveling a bit fast for the curve, and, over-correcting, had run up the opposing bank and flipped. We walked up to see if help was needed. Aussies are very resourceful, and no one comes to this part of the country without tow equipment. All the men on hand ganged up to right the truck and tow it out of the way. Good thing, because traffic was stalled in both directions, and the tide would be blocking the only other way out! The driver's spirit was probably as crushed as his truck. Seems he was a carpenter's apprentice and his job depends on his ute.

It was a long way out through the forest, but it was beautiful: Big tall trees, very dense growth. At the other end was the village of Rainbow Beach where we stopped for a late lunch in a very handsome, recently renovated pub and for a pass through an underbody car wash. From there we stopped off to visit some friends of Rod and Sue's who own a neat little compound on an inlet overlooking Tin Can Bay, from which they supply bait, ice and rental boats for the campers in the camp ground opposite. Now there was a nice set-up!

Rod and Sue apologized for the trip home being inland, but in late afternoon the landscape on the way to and south on the Bruce Highway was just gorgeous. The hills are lumpy and the land good farmland, much of which, Rod told us, is due to be inundated by a reservoir. We have been reading about this in the news, and it is a plan that has all the residents up in arms, as evidenced by homemade billboards against the project all along the highway. The Bruce Highway, which would have to be moved to accommodate the reservoir, is the major north-south highway of Eastern Australia. Even so, in these parts it is but a two-lane road!

So, a big thank-you to Rod and Sue for a great day out. Every time we get out and see some of the countryside, it strengthens our resolve to get out and do more. And we will, just as soon as the boat is done and back on the market.

22 December 2008 – 2 January 2008 – The Holidays Australia Style

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:40:00 +0000

This is the first year in many that the Two Captains have not flown back to the States for the holiday season. Our last Christmas aboard was in the remote anchorage of Bahia Santa Elena, Costa Rica in 2001! In 2002 the holidays were interwoven with our wedding plans, in 2003 it was too easy and affordable from Mexico to miss, and in 2004 we were in Los Angeles holding our breath for our grandson Kai's very imminent arrival.

That year it was not so convenient to get back since the boat was in the Society Islands, and French Polynesia's visa requirements obligated us to stay out of the country a full six months. Little did we know it at the time, but that was the beginning of the end for us. Not only did we allow our hearts to get all entangled with the newest member of the family, but the extended circumstances seduced us into buying the motor home to be our land base. Now with one foot on the boat and one onshore, we have been dividing our time ever since.

No one needs an explanation for why we didn't make the trip this year. The distance is long, travel costs are high, money is tight, and the boat is for sale. In theory, when Tackless II has a new owner, we will no longer have to make the murderous commute, so, the family has granted us a dispensation this year.

Which is not to say we haven't missed being there! But thanks to video Skype we have not only talked with everyone in both families, but we were able, by getting up at midnight on the 26th, to actually watch Kai open his presents Christmas morning in Florida!

As for Christmas in Oz, it is a very different experience. Mooloolaba, being a resort community, has filled up to the gills, and its beach and restaurants are packed. Traffic crawls, and should you think to do errands by car, you will have to wait until nightfall to find another parking place! Even here on the dock, the slips around us have filled with boats that come here annually for the holiday week, including slip owners who only actually use the slip themselves this one month! Most of the boats have sported some sort of Christmas decoration, and the docks have been teeming with kids and grandkids. Fortunately, our marina did host a Christmas party early on which allowed us to finally meet a bunch of our neighbors, so we have not been totally left out of all the festivities.

After our busy and somewhat extravagant week in Sydney, we didn't actually have much planned here. On Christmas Eve the "Yacht Club" at the other marina hosted an orphan's dinner with a BYO-everything BBQ. Since we have several acquaintances there, including, of course, our buddies Tricky and Jane and the fast growing Dudley, it made for a nice evening even though the sky threatened rain.

The next morning dawned bright and clear, and we got up around five to meet Sandi and Peter of Otama Song on the beach for champagne. What Peter didn't really make clear was that they had whole big breakfast planned. By the time we arrived, they had not only staked out a table and a grill, but had cooked up a huge stack of meat, sausagesm bacon, grilled tomatoes and toast.

Sandra, the lady skipper of the 70' Plum, also joined us and brought the prawns that no Aussie Christmas is right without. Caught a bit short, we made a couple of trips back and forth to the boat to augment supplies as they got low.

With all this and more goodies that Sandi had stashed in her Esky (Aussie for cooler), we ended up eating, drinking and swimming until nearly noon! What we should have guessed is that this is not merely an Otama Song tradition, it is an Aussie tradition. Every grill, table and bench was in use, and latecomers brought their own grills, tables and chairs!

Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) is also a big deal here in Oz, especially for sailors because it is the start of the Sydney Hobart Race. Randy and Sheri reportedly climbed the trail to north head from Manly to watch the start from there, but we had to make do with watching it on TV. Thinking we were smart, we and Peter and Sandi went over to the The Wharf Pub, a sort of sports and gambling bar at the other end of the docks, to watch the coverage on their giant screen TVs. That part worked out well, but unfortunately, management wouldn't turn off the Muzak and turn up the sound! Still, the kind of shots that airborne cameras can get can't be matched! It was truly wild to see the race boats trying to tack their way out of the harbor across the wakes of the hundreds if not thousands of spectator boats trying to keep up!

We decided to lay relatively low for New Year's Eve. Mooloolaba's Council was hosting a big do on the beach, with not one but two fireworks shows planned: one at 8pm for families with children and another one at midnight. It's always been a tenet of mine that if someone is going to fire off all that money into thin air, I owe it to them to be there. Thanks to portable fencing and a ban on parking, the whole Esplanade was turned into a controlled, alcohol and drug free zone for the night, with the exception, we presume, of the actual restaurants! This is not to say there weren't plenty of potted people about, but at least they had to exit the area to refuel.

Against all odds, we managed to find our way up there for both shows. We found a good spot in the sand with our backs against the seawall. We had imagined that the fireworks might originate from a boat off the beach or maybe even from one of the breakwaters across the bay at the harbor entrance, but in the end it was not quite that grand. The launch point turned out to be the beach just beyond the Surf Club, and although the pyrotechnics came at a fast and furious rate, they never gained a whole lot of altitude. Both shows were exactly the same, but we found the early crowd more appreciative.

Once again it turns out the place to be was Sydney. My sister back in North Carolina evidently watched the Sydney display on TV, and of course Randy and Sheri did it truly right by booking places on one of the Harbor's New Year's Eve dinner cruises. They said it was the most spectacular display they had ever seen!

So, here we are in 2009. We are hopeful things will get a little more back to normal next week. We have managed to pry out from our agent the news that customs has accepted our valuation for importing Tackless II. That will be a big step in the process of getting her sold. Don has made huge inroads on the interior varnish with very little help from me, and once quarantine has signed off on us we will finish a few woodwork repairs. All in all, I can't imagine how anyone could resist her!

By the way, Santa did not totally overlook the two captains. He brought us a tent with which to do some camping and a 1990 Toyota Camry to carry it around in. Just think of it as a poor man's RV! We are hopeful that, so equipped, we will be able to take off in a couple of weeks and see a little of this huge and beautiful country before we have to depart.

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16-21 December 2008 - Sydney Visit

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:24:00 +0000

How cool was it to take off from nearby Maroochydore Airport in bright, clear weather and fly south along the coast to Sydney! It was easy to see from the plane window all the landmarks along the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane: the Marooochy River, Tackless II at the dock in Mooloolaba, Bribie Island, Deception Bay and Scarborough Marina, not to mention all the sandy shoals in Moreton Bay and the loops of the Brisbane river snaking up to where Procyon was anchored a few weeks before.

It was another visit to Procyon that has us on our way to Sydney. She was moored at Cammeray Marina in North Sydney (33*.49'S;151*.13'E), (Marina is at bottom center of the photo which is looking south to the city)

and we had plans to celebrate Sheri's 50th birthday and take in a Christmas concert at the Sydney Opera House on the 19th. In between, we hoped to see as much of the great city as we could.

The coast of New South Wales around Sydney looks from the air (and the map) to be one long series of deep bays and estuaries pushing way back into the continent, of which Sydney Harbor is just one. Sydney Harbour itself is home to countless coves and backwaters, most all of which are packed with boats at anchor, on moorings or in slips. We flew right over the fjord-like Cammeray inlet on our approach, and what surprised me was how hilly the land was. I don't know why I was surprised; Randy and Sheri had warned us of the 107 steps to reach the street from the marina.

Sydney's Airport is right on Botany Bay, allowing tourists to land at the very spot James Cook did in the Endeavor back in 1770. At the airport we bought green passes that would allow us unlimited use of the city's trains, busses and ferries and promptly climbed on the train that would carry us into to Wynyard Station in the city center. There we exited the underground to catch the bus to Cammeray. It was an easy, organized connection even though we'd managed to arrive at rush hour. Having just missed the rush hour express bus, we took about twenty-five minutes on the local across the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge (from which you can look down onto the Harbor and the Opera House) and through the neighborhoods of Neutral Bay to reach our stop where Randy and Sheri were waiting for us. The marina was about five blocks away, its unassuming sign and stairway down squeezed between very upscale houses.

Cammeray marina is a relic. The docks and slipway (it is actually a boatyard) has been in existence over a hundred years, predating a lot of the fancy houses squeezed onto the hillside. Seemingly out of the way, it actually is a well-known center for the sailing community, and two of the boats on the dock were preparing themselves for the famous Sydney Hobart race coming up soon on Boxing Day. It is a beautiful spot, and thanks to a golf course above the northern shore in Northbridge the bay retains a natural look. There are lots of birds, including a flock of cockatoos who could sustain an amazingly annoying chatter.

We took it easy the first night, enjoying a lovely dinner assembled by Sheri and grilled by Randy. I believe I have described Procyon before, but, briefly, she is the owner's version of a Gozzard 44, meaning her whole interior has been conceived for one couple. That means that visitors like us sleep in the forepeak salon. However, the area converts ingeniously to a guest berth by sliding the seats of the couches together on top the coffee table, and privacy is created by raising a folding divider to cover the pass-through to the breakfast nook and galley.

The next day, Sheri's B-day started with champagne and omelets. Then we hit the tourist trail, retracing our steps to the bus to Wynyard. From Wynyard we were heading for the famous Manly Ferry when Sheri took a sudden detour into a chocolate café. Well, she was the birthday girl and we were honor-bound to indulge her, especially as it was just about the right time for second breakfast. I sure wish I could remember the name of the place, because it was a revelation. Sheri ordered chocolate dipped strawberries to share and a hot chocolate, I had a decaf mocha made with dark chocolate, Don got a sinful brownie and Randy had a chocolate shot! Who knew you could do such decadent stuff!

We reached Sydney's famous Circular Quay just in time to walk onto the Manly Ferry.

We rode standing on the side decks and bow drinking in all the iconic sights: the bridge, the Opera House, North and South Head, and all the scenic bays and coves in between.

Sydney is huge! It's metropolitan population of over 4.2 million sprawls over more than 600 suburbs and 2,500 square kilometers, most all of which are oriented to the water, either the coves of the harbor itself or its oceanfront beaches.

Manly Beach is one of these. Situated near the North Head of the entrance into Port Jackson (aka Sydney Harbor), the ferry docks on one side of a narrow isthmus while beach itself is on the other. In between is a shopping street of galleries and surf shops.

Packed with bathers, the beach is a long curve backed by a tree-studded esplanade and the 9 km long scenic walkway leading to the top of North head. We were headed along the walkway when I realized I had left my Admirals' Angle ball cap at the pub where we'd stopped for a beer. Fortunately it was rescued by another cruising couple from the boat Larissa!

For her birthday dinner that night, Sheri had picked a steak house in Neutral Bay. Imagine our disorientation when, after picking out four expensive steaks (distinguished on the menu by cut, state of origin and how it had been fed), our baked potatoes and salads, the meat arrived cold with tongs and we had to grill it ourselves! All in all it was pretty much like an urban version of Musket Cove. However, the results were outstanding. Can't argue with that!

For our second day of playing tourist, we chose Darling Harbor as a destination. Darling Harbor is a deeply inset bay west of the Harbour Bridge whose waterfront is lined by commercial wharves and upscale tour boats. At the innermost end is Cockle Bay which has been developed for tourism. Our first stop, on the east side of the bay, was the Chinese Garden of Friendship.

Built in honor of Australia's Bicentenary in 1998, the garden works a miracle in blotting out bustling downtown in favor of dozens of small water and rock garden-scapes all knitted together with pavilions and paths, streams and waterfalls, flowers and bamboo. Every corner is a charming space, every angle a soothing view. At the end of the path is a teahouse where (for today's second breakfast) Sheri and I had dim sum and tea while the boys had pastry and coffee.

On the west side of Cockle Bay is a huge convention center, a strip of boutique restaurants and the Maritime Museum. Walking around, we passed a stair-stepped circular reflecting pool and sveralvery unusual fountains.

Now, Donald! behave yourself!

~~~~~~~

At the Maritime Museum we were very lucky that Australia's careful replica of James Cook's HMB Endeavor was in port and open for touring.

For us salty mariners, this was a thrill, as no one sails the Pacific without developing a deep respect for Cook. The Endeavor is not just a museum piece. It has sailed around the world, and one can book berths aboard for these trips as working crew and supernumeraries. The onboard docents were very knowledgeable and brought each corner of the ship alive, from the seats of ease in the main chains, the huge cook stove in the mess deck,

the crew hammocks swinging from the crossbeams,

the incredible low pass-through where the old collier had been modified to accommodate Cook's crew and mission and where the young midshipmen lived, on aft to the quarters of Cook, his officers and the members of Joseph Banks' famous party.

We did not see the hold below, which in the replica is where all the "mod-cons" (like the engine, generators and refrigeration) are hidden. But we did enjoy the deck and imagining that we at the helm.

We also toured the HMAS Onslow, a diesel submarine, and the HMAS Vampire, a destroyer, both retired from the Australian Navy. Both vessels also had docents aboard to help bring alive the way life had been, but what was kind of cool is that several of them had actually served aboard the ships when they were on active duty.

On Friday we spent the morning with a long walk to explore the neighborhood on both sides of the Cammeray inlet. It is amazing how some of these houses have been built, literally carving themselves out perches from solid rock. Across the head of the inlet and beneath the Northbridge Bridge is a park with a boat ramp, explaining the source of the motorboat wakes that jostled Procyon during the night.

In the afternoon we dressed up in our party clothes and took the bus to the Rocks neighborhood of downtown Sydney. (Sorry, everyone, I forgot to take the camera. Trust me...we all looked "flash!")

The Rocks was the site of the city's first settlement. It is a far cry now from those early, reportedly squalid days. Now it is a crowded canyon of a neighborhood with narrow streets, refurbished old buildings, trendy boutiques and hopping night spots. We had dinner at the Argyle, a converted warehouse and courtyard that has a peculiarly eclectic menu and is clearly a hot spot with the young professional crowd. By the time we left the courtyard was packed with after-work, Friday-night-before-Christmas partiers.

We walked from the Rocks past Circular Quay to the Sydney Opera House where we all had tickets for a Christmas concert at the concert hall.

The opera house up close is made of bone colored tiles, a surprise to me. Its location, out on a spit of land projecting from the Botanical Gardens is not quite as remote as all the pictures make it look. It is a fabulous spot, however, with the Harbor Bridge soaring overhead (we could see people climbing the girders at sunset!) and the busy harbor on three sides. When Randy and Sheri first arrived, they actually anchored for two nights just off the Opera House…until all the ferry wakes drove them out!

Our concert was fun. It featured the Opera House Christmas Chorus, the Opera House Christmas Orchestra, four personable opera soloists – Yvonne Kenney, David Hobson, Natalie Jones and James Egglestone, and a pops-style emcee named Simon Burke. The house was full, as one might predict, with families with lots of youngsters. Randy and Sheri had ordered tickets online for this concert six months beforehand. We ordered ours the week before. Randy and Sheri were in the fourth row, all the way to the right. We were in the fifth row, dead center. Go figure!

The program was all Christmas carols; some were performed by the soloists, some by the chorus, some with both, and some with the audience participating. There were no surprises -- appropriate since one isn't really looking for surprises on Christmas – until the end when they sang a song called "Six White Boomers," clearly a favorite with the crowd. "Six White Boomers" is Australia's answer to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." It is a Rolf Harris secular carol about a baby kangaroo looking for "his mummy" that Santa endeavors to help. But Santa gives his reindeer the day off and uses six white boomers (the boomers evidently being a species of large kangaroos) to pull the sleigh around Australia. If you want to add this song to your Christmas repertoire, it is easy to find and hear on the internet! Be careful; it's catchy! At the end of the concert, for an encore, the singers invited all the children up on stage for a reprise, which was executed with great spirit.

After the concert we hit another chocolate café for an après-concert snack, only to realize that we'd missed our last bus. Instead of a taxi, we caught a different bus which brought us to the very bridge to Northbridge we'd discovered that morning on our walk. Finding our way back through the maze of streets in the dark was a bit challenging, but as we were trying to make out a street sign (no street lights) we realized the "newel post" of the sign was actually a live owl! Adventures in suburbia!

For our last day in Sydney we had a get together with our friend Steve who with his wife Rachel now own the Beneteau 44 Apogee (formerly owned by our friends Joe & Julie of Palmlea in Fiji). Apogee is still languishing in a Vuda Point Marina cyclone pit because Steve got tied up with yet another project with a company from which he keeps trying to retire. As it has turned out, it is just as well they weren't out cruising, as family illnesses have totally distracted all their plans. We had originally thought our Sydney visit would be to Steve's company apartment, but Steve has been tied up across the continent in Perth much of the month.

However he returned in time to spend a day with us, carrying all four of us by car (what decadence!) through the city for an afternoon at Bondi, Sydney's other famous beach.

A major destination for surfers and backpackers, Bondi (pronounced Bond-eye) is the one you always read the shark stories about, and there is a big saltwater lap pool at the south end for those who don't want to risk it. The weather was chilly and blustery, so we all resisted temptation and made for a cosy little Greek sidewalk restaurant for lunch. Then we drove on down to the next beach in Coogee where we had refreshments at a waterfront pub.

By this time, our Duracell battery packs were running down, and we looked forward to a quiet evening aboard Procyon after having packed up for our morning departure. Instead we ended up having an impromptu happy-hour get together (that lasted until 10pm, as I remember) with Steve and Truus of the catamaran Key of D, fellow alumni of the Port to Port Rally, who had just anchored in Cammeray inlet. It is a small, small world.

The next morning, Randy and Sheri very graciously helped us schlep our stuff UP the marina's 107 steps. You would think after five days it might be a less breathless endeavor, but I must say, with all the high living, any improvement was marginal. We caught our bus, made the connection at Wynyard Station like old hands (on Sunday morning the station was so deserted we were afraid it was closed!), and eased onto our flight with nary a hitch.

Instead of flying back to Maroochydore, however, we flew to Brisbane in order to collect Avior's Land Rover, kindly left with a parking service for us to pick up (Jim and Paula having flown to Scotland for two months.) What a great service this Andrew's Airport Parking was! A private enterprise, you call, they pick you up at the terminal, then drop you at your vehicle, and off you go. Fortunately for Don— facing the challenge of driving the five-speed manual Land Rover on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car and shifting with the wrong hand – the exit from the lot was two simple left-hand turns straight on to the Bruce Highway. By the time we reached Mooloolaba about two hours later, he had it all down pat!

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 09:55:00 +0000

December 10 – Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:09:00 +0000

One of the reasons the Blog has fallen a bit behind is the fact that I needed to keep the account of our trip to the Australia Zoo close to our chest until Christmas. That's because we had SUCH a special time, it became a story for our grandson Kai.

The Australia Zoo (http://www.australiazoo.com.au) is the life work of Steve Irwin, famous to the world as the Crocodile Hunter, and his family. Located nearby in Landsborough, the zoo was originally started in the 70s by Steve's parents as a reptile farm. The spotlight brightened on the zoo as word spread of Steve's antics with crocodiles. The zoo with its unique style and zeal is now carried on by Steve's wife Terri, daughter Bindi and young son Robert, as well as a whole crew of enthusiastic animal handlers. A visit to the zoo has been high on our Australia To Do list.

The plan was to rendezvous with cruising friends from the Scarborough area on Wednesday. The two of us took the bus from Mooloolaba (there is a special free zoo bus that you can make reservations for at the zoo store on the Esplanade!) and beat the other couples coming by rental car.

At the entry is a huge poster of Steve Irwin in mid-leap. It was the first indication that the Crocodile Hunter continues to defy death at the Australia Zoo! Everywhere you go, there are monitors displaying old segments of his animal encounters. If you didn't know, you wouldn't.

The grounds are very nice, with animals getting plenty of relatively natural space, but what really makes this zoo special is the cadre of uniformed ranger/animal handlers. Pretty much every critter has someone paying particular attention to it. Many of the animals, from cockatoos to alligators, are taken out of their enclosures and walked around the grounds on leashes, giving visitors the chance to get up close and even touch!

Mid morning we went to the show in the "Crocoseum", a sort of stadium with a shallow and very clear pool in the center of the fenced in lawn. The pool is connected to "off stage" with a long narrow "stream". There must be a "Steve Irwin" pill that the staff takes before each show because they come in fully charged with his very recognizable brand of enthusiasm. In our opinion the beginning of the show was a little over done, especially when a couple of costumed characters paraded through. I'm pretty sure we all thought about bolting out of there about that point. Thank goodness we didn't.

For us the showed turned super special with the "Free Flight Bird Show." A guy came in with a pet carrier with what appeared to be doves. He was alleged to be "training" them, but when he opened the door, the birds simply flew away. At that point the audience was enlisted to call the birds back. On cue, the sky began to fill with birds, but instead of the three doves, the incoming flyers were scarlet macaws, blue parrots, hawks and, well all manner of birds we couldn't identity. The birds flew multiple laps around the stadium before targeting their handlers who were stationed throughout. It was quite a thrill to see these fliers with enough space to actually fly. Indeed the final arrival was the pterodactyl-like Black-Necked Stork (known in Australia as a Jabiru) Djagarna. Djagarna (most of the animals at the Australia Zoo have names) who worked hard to climb high enough to get over a row of trees outside the Crocoseum. Then, her laps around and landing on the lawn seemed…precarious. Her performance was a surefire crowd pleaser, but we note, she walked off at the end! That flying stuff is a lot of work!

After the birds came the snake show. The snakes couldn't quite command the oohs and aaahs that the bird acrobatics did since most of them never left their handlers' arms, but it was quite impressive that the thrust of the narrative about them was that Australians can easily live in harmony with all the snakes that share their continent. The big boa constrictor, however, was allowed to swim offstage down the stream.

Which made a nice segue for the crocodile that shortly after swam in. While describing the habitat and range of Australia's crocs (they are known as "salties" but they can just as easily be found in fresh water!), the thrust again was of how to live in harmony. The "show" was a demonstration of just what crocs can and can't do. They CAN lunge fairly high out of the water to snap up food, but, because of their weight, they CAN'T move very fast on land leading to the recommendation of staying about 4 meters from water's edge when the presence of crocodiles is possible. This show, of course, is what made Steve Irwin famous. One wonders just how many crocodile hunter clones trying to live up to his reputation the zoo is able to keep on staff!

After the Croseum show, we separated to wander around the rest of the zoo. We had an ulterior agenda.
We had brought along in Don's knapsack our grandson Kai's Teddy Bear Joshua who has been traveling with us aboard Tackless II these past four years. In April when Joshua left with us from the Tampa Airport, for the first time Kai noticed. Early in the season, messages from Kai mostly went: "I love you, I miss you, and I want my bear back." In return, Joshua took to sending Kai emails about some of our adventures. We all thought the Australia Zoo would make a good story, and we had ideas of sneaking a few photos of Joshua with animals in the background.

Well, enter Sandi, one of the zoo's animal handlers. We bumped into her as she was strolling the paths with a cockatoo. Both Sandi and the cockatoo were interested in Joshua's story, so moments later they were urging us to go down and meet an alligator that was being walking in a fenced field. To our amazement, they meant go INTO the field! We got several shots of the three of us with the gator, all keeping prudently to the non-biting end.

Joshua says the gator felt like plastic! Believe me, the gator wasn't, but thank goodness our close encounter with a crocodile was!

You might think that our friends were liable to consider us daft. And if not our friends, then the zoo staff. And if not the staff, then the other zoo-goers. To the contrary, everybody seemed to treat Joshua like a star, and our friends concluded it was a fine thing to be part of his entourage. Over the course of the rest of the day, Joshua met dingoes, kangaroos, a wombat, and an emu.

We also saw the elephants and tigers in the Southeast Asian section of the zoo, and read about the new African section set to open in 2009.

But, perhaps predictably, Joshua's favorites were definitely the koala bears. He got quite the kick of hanging out with the koalas in their zoo trees, and thanks again to Sandi, Joshua had a special introduction to Ellen, (a koala named for Ellen De Generis…whom I must admit she rather resembles!) I wasn't privy to their conversation, but apparently Joshua mentioned something about being homesick for his buddy Kai, because Ellen suggested that her nephew Andy, a koala with unusually active interest in his surroundings, take over looking after us in Australia.

Which is how we came home with two bears instead of one!

And how Joshua came to be the one member of Tackless II to fly home in time for Christmas.

December 6-8 – House Party in the Country

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:10:00 +0000

It was pretty special that our friends Jim and Paula threw a big party for our anniversary at their house in the Sunshine Coast hinterland near Cooroy. Well, okay, the party wasn't exactly for our anniversary. It was actually in celebration of Paula's 40th birthday, but it was scheduled a week early because the Hollands had new tenants moving into the house the following week and they themselves were taking off for Scotland for two months. However, thanks to the rescheduling, the party ended up taking place on our anniversary, and we could haven't conceived a nicer spread of food or gathering of people…even considering we didn't know any of them!

Jim and Paula, of course, have been out cruising most of the past year aboard their boat Avior. They took off at the beginning of the last cruising season with a rally from Australia to Vanuatu, spent four months there followed by the same 6-7 weeks in New Caledonia that we did, which, of course is where we got to know them. It might seem a relatively short acquaintance to landlubbers, but Jim and Paula have gone out of their way to extend these two Yanks an exceptional hospitality in their home country.

They have been trying to get us up to see their house since we got to Mooloolaba, however without wheels, it pretty much meant that we had to rely on them to come get us and bring us back. And much of that time, they were tied up with a haul out in their home anchorage of Tin Can Bay as well as working on the house to get it ready for new tenants. It finally worked out for all of us for them to pick us up in Mooloolaba Saturday evening before the Sunday Party on their way home from a Christmas party with Paula's former co-workers.

It was an hour's drive up the Bruce Highway to Eumundi where we turned inland into the hills of the hinterland. It makes for a big change from the long strip of suburbia that hugs the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. It is not unlike a subtropical Vermont! Here are rolling hills and eucalyptus forests with winding roads, grazing cattle, and country homes with plenty of land and flowers around them. The evening light was waning fast thanks to dense thunderclouds rolling in, and we turned into their driveway in the nick of time to get our bags up the steps before the thunderstorm let loose. How glorious it is to sip cold beers and dine on a great supper of kangaroo sausage, sweet potato and salad under the eaves of a snug porch while the rain and lightning do their thing.

Because the house was between rentals, there was not much furniture in place. Jim and Paula's big accomplishment of the previous weeks was the bringing in of a container (which required a crane to hoist it over the house!) in which to store all their furniture while the house was rented. They had, however, excavated a guest bed for us, which was a pleasant surprise because we had anticipated a mattress on the floor. We fell asleep to the flashing and booming of the thunderstorm and woke the next morning to tiny wallabies nibbling on grass shoots in the front garden.

Since Paula and Jim are later sleepers, we got up, made ourselves coffee to sip on the front porch. By morning light we were able to get a better look at the house and grounds. The house is a single level home, projecting on stilts from the steep hillside that slopes down to a pond in a eucalyptus glade, where lotuses float and frogs croak. The hill puts the fairly open canopy of the glade on a level with the porch enabling very easy bird watching. We'd woken to the inane cackle of an Australia kookaburra (although we never saw him) and during coffee a flock of crested white cockatoos set up a ruckus as they passed through.

After coffee we set out for an hour's walk around the country neighborhood. That first morning we saw three more kangaroos, including a big fellow in the middle of the dirt road. We also saw a lot of cows and calves plus a few bulls, most of them with the hump-shoulders of Brahma blood. Neighbors were spread out in a mix of everything from older cottages up to some bigger modern haciendas, and we met several residents out walking as we were, one of them accompanied by a huge dog (Mastiff and Rhodesian Ridgeback mix) named Tyson like Tiffany's Yorkie. Aussie are very quick to be friendly, and these rural dwellers were no different.

The party itself started about 10 am and went on until late with people coming and going. Since Paula and Jim had been away for many months, it was a great reunion with friends who had missed them. There were lots of kids about, and the food, which Jim and Paula had been working on for days, seemed unlimited.

The birthday cake was a huge rectangle of chocolate decadence called a mud cake, and the mounds of empty beer and wine bottles spoke clearly of the Aussie capacity to party.

Monday morning, Jim gave us a tour of the 4.5 acre "estate." One thing that fascinated me was that he had cut down the eucalyptus forest uphill from the house (eucalyptus are a big fire hazard) and replaced them with a grove of eliocarpus saplings. In Australia, the eliocarpus is knows as the Tasman Blueberry tree, and Jim's had doubled in height in just a couple of years. What made this interesting to me was that it is the same species that I planted in the corner of our garden in Crystal River, FL. No one gave me a hint it would grow so tall so fast! Cool!

There is a famous organic farmer's market in nearby Eumundi, and like many of the people living in this part of Australia, Paula and Jim lean heavily toward green living techniques. Jim explained his system of organic vegetable gardening (when they are in full time residence) via which he uses six chickens in a movable, geodesic dome-like coop that he rotates through twelve sections of his garden in two-week intervals. All food scraps and grass clippings are thrown into the coop, and the chickens' natural scratching till the soil while their poop fertilizes things. Evidently in Australia, where conditions tend to be dry, it is highly desirably not to open up the soil to till it like we do in America.

All in all, it seemed like a very agreeable lifestyle (even without furniture), and we could kind of see why Paula's could be having a little trouble mustering enthusiasm for moving back aboard their 40 foot sailboat for another year!

27-30 November 2008 - What the 2Cs did for Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:19:00 +0000

Brisbane Getaway

There wasn't even a flicker of recognition here in Australia that November 27 was a major US Holiday, although I did see a snap of President Bush holding up a naked turkey body, which was an odd photo to show with the story of him giving the annual gobbler pardons. However, I am fairly sure that photo was on US Yahoo.

I was determined not to let the day slide by and had been searching for a turkey to roast. I finally found a 3.5 kilo bird on the bottom shelf in the frozen food section, but I wasn't quite sure which day I would roast it – Thursday, by the calendar, or Friday, when everybody back home would be celebrating.

In the end I didn't roast it either day. Thursday morning, just as we got back to the boat from our now regular morning walk, we got a call from Randy and Sheri of Procyon. "We are anchored in the river right where it goes through downtown Brisbane and it is so cool. You should get on the train and come down!"

And so we did. Just like that! We threw tooth brushes and a change of clothes into the backpack and then stepped out of the marina to the corner where we caught the 615 bus that carried us to Landsborough Station, from where we easily hopped on the connecting trains to downtown Brisbane's Central Station. It took just two and half hours to make the trip, and as, we popped out into the sunlight, Randy and Sheri were waiting for us!

Talk about culture shock! From laid back Bundaberg, to sophisticated Mooloolaba, to supercharged downtown Brissie!

We emerged from Central Station at the corner of Edward and Ann streets (Brisbane's streets are named after British kings and queens – queens go one way, and kings go the other!) and gazed downhill at an urban landscape of ultra-modern buildings mixed most satisfyingly with beautifully preserved old stone ones from the 1800s.

Eight miles up the Brisbane River from Moreton Bay (another wedge of water trapped between the mainland and an offshore island), the city of Brisbane started life, like so much of Australia, as a penal colony, specifically one for difficult convicts from the Botany Bay colony farther south in New South Wales. But eighteen years later it was opened to free settlers, and in recent decades it has become one of the most popular places in Oz to live.

The city center is caught in a couple of deep loops of the river, and Procyon was anchored in the main stretch between the Story and Captain Cook bridges, right off the beautiful City Botanical Gardens. On the opposite side of the river the steep red Kangaroo Point cliffs rise above a long strip of parkland. The cliffs are spotlighted at night, so with the cityscape on the one hand and the cliffs on the other and bracketed by the two bridges, the anchorage was a very dramatic spot to sit.

At the foot of Edward Street is the city "marina" a string of parallel piles to which was moored a very motley assortment of long term liveaboards. Procyon, virtually the only cruiser anchored there, was definitely the classiest vessel in sight.

Upon our arrival, we had a delicious lunch in the Pig & Whistle café in the middle of pedestrian-only Queen Street, and then spent an hour or two wandering the streets, poking our noses in a few stores, generally agog at all the glitz of full-bore civilization. Preparations were underway for various Christmas events, including the lighting of the city Christmas tree and a carol concert in a few days. As the feet and energy wore down, we found our way to the dinghy dock along George Street which borders the Botanic Gardens on one side and opulent buildings of old stone or new glass on the other.

The views from Procyon were stunning, especially as dusk approached and the city lit herself up. We enjoyed a few relaxing beers in the cockpit, watching kayakers from the Riverlife Adventure Center drop two dozen kayaks into the river for a slack-tide paddle before the current of the changing tide pulled them back and turned Procyon right around. There is regular ferry service up and down the river by fast power cats creating occasional wakes, and the river water, I'm regretful to say, was not pretty. We all agreed it was about the color of Fijian kava, which is to say milky brown. This was especially aggravated by the unusual spate of rain the region has had the past few weeks.

We dined that evening at the Café Mondial, not so much out of choice, but because many of the restaurants we checked out were closed for private parties! Early Christmas parties? I guess when you don't have the Thanksgiving barrier, you can start celebrating as early in November as you want!

The next morning we took our walk through the Botanical Gardens and across the river via the Goodwill pedestrian bridge to the bottom of the South Bank Parklands, where, we understand is Streets Beach, a manmade swimming beach giving city residents a better option than that lovely river water! After breakfast on the boat, we went ashore intending to catch the mid-morning train back because we had invited Tricky and Jane for turkey Friday night, but a phone call from the Lionhearts advised us they were going to be tied up picking up their new van and their new puppy, so could we make it another night? So instead, we all went to the mid-morning show of the new Baz Luhrmann film "Australia" in a fancy downtown cinema. (Don was most impressed that they had reserved seats!)

According to the newspapers "Australia" has not done too well in its first week, and reviews are mixed. This is always painful after a huge publicity campaign. And the fact is the flick is more than a little hokey, particularly in the beginning. One wonders what Luhrmann was aiming for with the almost caricature performances from his leads in the opening scenes. This is not good in a three-hour movie! Fortunately, things seems to settle down after about the first third, and the whole thing is saved by the believable performances by the Aborigine actors, particularly the enchanting central character of Nullah, a mixed race child of great resources and connection to his Aboriginal heritage through his grandfather, the mystical and mysterious "King George." Watching hunky Hugh Jackman (especially after the ridiculous early scenes) is no chore, either. What's really surprising about the movie is that despite a fairly predictable script and some rather one-dimensional characters, the subject matter of Australia's historical racism is bluntly addressed. The absurdity of that racism and the grandeur of the landscape are the movie's two most successful messages. So all in all, we would say it is worth going to see on the big screen, with the proviso that you don't want to give up on it before the cattle drive starts!

From the movie we hopped back on the train, which was much more crowded on the ride north, being as it was Friday afternoon, than it had been on the way south. I must say that our train rides both ways were pleasant experiences thanks to friendly Aussies who were keen to chat us up. On the way down it was Dennis, a 30-year employee of the train company, who not only assured us we were going the right way and making the right connections, but shared with us a lot of information about the landscape we were passing through, (much of it dedicated to fruit production – ranging from pineapples to strawberries to lychees! – that all used to ship by train and now ship by truck,… tsk, tsk) not to mention all the side trips into the Sunshine Coast hinterland that we shouldn't miss.

One of the highlights from the train window are the unusual Glasshouse Mountains. In total there are sixteen of these shark's tooth-like crags that stick up abruptly from the flat green surrounds like rocks from the sea. Of ancient volcanic origin, they are what remains after millions of years of erosion. The train passes right by three or four of these, and Dennis assured us we could climb one we were sufficiently motivated. It looks to us to be more like rock climbing than a morning stroll.

Kangaroos, Ho!

On the bus link from Landsborough Station back to Mooloolaba I finally got my wish to see kangaroos in the wild…in the suburbs no less! The first sight was a head peaking up over the raised bank as the bus whizzed by. I exclaimed and Don glanced out over his should in time to see a whole pack of about eight in an open area under some power lines. Only moments later the bus turned into a university campus and we saw a large kangaroo sitting on his own in the middle of a playing field! Clearly late afternoon is the time to see them!

Christmas Boat Parade

Although the turkey was now thoroughly thawed in the fridge, I still couldn't cook it on Saturday because Saturday was the annual Mooloolaba Christmas Boat parade. Even though it is summer here, it does not stay light late on this coast because Queensland does not adopt daylight savings. We have observed that one big plus of this is that Queenslanders get up early to swim, surf, walk, jog, and kayak before work rather than after. However, another perk of the plan is that it is dark enough by 6:30pm for Christmas lights!

We watched the parade from Lionheart in its end berth at the Yacht Club Marina, giving us a great vantage point as the line of boats passed us several times. Our last boat parade was with Diane and Alex in Hernando Beach, FL where the temperature was in the forties! This was much warmer! The best boat by our vote was a neighbor from the Yacht Club who had turned his mast into a giant sparking candle with, somehow, a flame at the top. This would go "out" at intervals and a "match" would ascend and relight it. I have to assume this was some kind of commercially produced decoration, but it sure was perfect for a boat application.

Of course the other highlight of the evening was playing with Tricky and Jane's new two-month old puppy, Dudley. Dudley is a chunky white guinea pig of a pup whose Daddy was a Maltese and whose Mum was a Staffordshire Terrier (pit bull to us gringos). Clearly Daddy was a bold and brave fellow! Duddles, as I prefer to think of him, has Dad's wispy white hair, but he has Mum's more solid build with a bunch of black spots showing through his coat.. He is pretty cute…now.

Thanksgiving

The Turkey finally went in the oven midday Sunday, which turned out to be the right day because both Tricky and Jane and Peter and Sandy were able to join us. Don went to help Tricky build a bed in their new van, which left me alone on the boat all day to cook at a nice leisurely pace so both of us were pretty happy. Everyone (including Duddles) assembled on T2 at about five pm, Sandy bringing a salad and Jane bringing a cheesecake and berries for "pudding." There was wine, beer and bubbly to wash it all down, and I must tell you that there was not a crumb of anything left!

Despite the economic blues, despite that fact that we are putting the boat on the market, and despite the fact that we are still far from family at this holiday time, we still have a great deal to be thankful for. And we are.

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15-25 November 2008 - Busy, Busy Busy….

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:57:00 +0000

(Remember, Tackless II is now listed for sale! For info, follow the first link in the list at right!)

Our first week in Mooloolaba has been almost hectic. First thing, Don rented a local storage locker and we have been excavating our forepeak and stall shower from the mounds of stuff that have filled them these past years. Some of it will go with the boat when it is sold, some of it will get shipped home, and the rest…well, we definitely have to do some hardening of the hearts. We've got a list posted of some of the loose equipment, and hopefully we'll earn a little extra beer money from that!

It's been a surprisingly social time on top of all that. Peter had made dinner for us that first night, one of his wonderful fish curries. The next afternoon we spent almost entirely with Randy and Sheri, knowing that these good friends would be sailing onward, potentially right out of our lives, the next morning. We explored Mooloolaba's esplanade for the first time, and enjoyed an afternoon coffee at one of the dozen or so coffee bars, before making reservations for dinner. That evening we toasted the occasion with a nice meal as the full moon rose fat and orange from the black sea. Procyon was gone at first light the next morning.

We'd thought things might begin to slow down. Not hardly. Peter and Sandy invited us to go with them to a local farmer's market. Although I have been very fond of my island markets, I can't deny that it is nice to go to one with things like broccoli, avocados, patty pan squash, herbs, mushrooms, macadamia nuts, and even a stall selling assorted olives. Afterwards we went to check out Sandy's lab, and then, leaving her to work her seventh day of the week (the lab was just days away from certification), Peter took us to visit some friends of theirs who happen to have a Harley in the garage. I could see Don's pulse rate pick up, especially after Andy started it up with a rumble.

By the midday, we were back at the dock in time to assist Tricky and Jane Lionheart in coming in. Remember my last updates on the challenges of the Sandy Straits and the Wide Bay Bar? Well, Tricky and Jane, who had been off visiting Tricky's brother, finally got off from Bundaberg only to have yet another lousy weather forecast posted. So as not to get stuck in Garry's like we did, the intrepid Lionhearts made the whole trip from Midtown marina, down the Burnett River, down Hervey Bay, through the channels of the Straits, out over the bar AT NIGHT, and down the coast to Mooloolaba in about thirty hours straight! Yikes. At least they had calm conditions and motored most of the way, but they did have some unidentified something in their propulsion system "slip' while crossing Wide Bay Bar. Unsure as to whether the problem was in the transmission or the Max prop, they nursed the boat over the last leg in a state of suspense, hence our standing by in the dinghy to help them if there were a problem in maneuvering.

Wouldn't you know, just then we got a call from the broker informing us that our first two potential buyers were on their way! Panic stations. The excavated spaces had to be speed cleaned and the rest of the boat put to rights. And then they showed up EARLY! We actually had to ask them to give us an hour!

By late afternoon the sky started to grow dark and threatening to the southwest. By evening, when we met up with Tricky and Jane again for dinner at the excellent and affordable Thai restaurant, the sky was black, and an ominous frontal line like a lozenge of silver fuzz stretched from one side of the sky to the other. Neighbors warned us of the possibility of strong winds and hail (!!!), so we dropped our solar panels, furled our awnings, and zipped up the enclosure. In the end we got some doozey lightning and thunder (as well as a brief black out), but we were spared the record storm conditions that played havoc with Brisbane forty miles to the south.

It did rain. In fact, it rained a LOT over the following days, making it hard to remember the sparkling blue sky of Saturday! But even in the rain, we've been kept busy! Aussies Jim and Paula of Avior, of whom we lost track when they went home to their house ashore (where they have poor cell phone service), popped up Monday afternoon for tea which turned into an impromtu dinner as we caught up. The next day they came back for us with their son Shane and we all drove an hour south to Redcliffe where Paula's 1971 Toyota Corolla had been left sitting by their daughter after it broke down three months ago. It seems, like a few other families we could name, that it takes Dad to come home to deal with automotive crises. If we could have got it going, Jim and Paula planned to lend us the car! However, it was not the quick fix we hoped for.

The day was not lost as we turned north and swung by the Scarborough Boat Harbor at the southern tip of Deception Bay, another popular stopping-over place for cruisers. The marina there is much bigger than the Wharf and perhaps even than the Yacht Club here, and the basin is shared by commercial fishing vessels. But the area lacks the charm and the recreation options that have so pleased us here in Mooloolaba. Our friends on Whisper were in the marina as well as Procyon, plus we discovered old friends Mike and Kathleen of Content, last seen in Tonga, in the next slip over.

The criss-crossing of courses and rediscovery of old acquaintances was demonstrated quite nicely the very next day when, taking our morning power walk along the promenade, a couple was stopped in their tracks at the sight of Don's Tackless II T-shirt. They turned out to be Peter and Margaret of Suwarro, one of the two boats we uplocked with in the Panama Canal. We had first met them in Cartegena -- and it was Peter that arranged our tour of the visiting British frigate there! – plus they had noodled with us in the San Blas islands. "Just when we think there could be no more boats we know coming through, up pops another!" After the Canal, Peter and Margaret had come straight on across the Pacific in 2001, completing their circumnavigation in Mooloolaba and returning to jobs they'd left nine years before!

Peter and Margaret introduced us that night to the weekly cruiser dinner orchestrated by a gal out of the Yacht Club Marina. Several of those attending were, like Peter and Margaret, cruisers who swallowed the anchor here some time ago. However there was quite a clutch of cruisers who had crossed the whole way from Panama this year! The general tone was a lot of complaint about the rough weather they'd all encountered! Well, duh! When you push that far that fast you can't wait out the bad stuff. There is absolutely nothing about a one-year crossing that appeals to us!

Things have finally slowed down to something approaching a routine. We get up early, do our walk, maybe indulge in a coffee and newspaper on the esplanade

, and spend the rest of the day puttering around the boat, with, maybe another walk to the grocery in the afternoon. Friday we braved the bus system to explore the commercial strip outside of town lucking into a patient driver who not only explained the ticketing system, but later stopped to pick us up when he saw us walking back along the highway!

I suspect this will pretty much be our routine for the foreseeable future, depending on the economy and how many people are keen to buy a cruising boat. We have fantasies of campervan or motorcycle travel, but with the economy the way it is, they may remain just that: fantasies.

PS: Check out my feature article on 'Circumnavigating Vanua Levu: Reflections on What Cruisers Seek" in the December Issue of Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine. It came out very nicely, and believe it or not, there are actually lots of pictures! You can read it online at http://viewer.zmags.com/showmag.php?magid=112881#/page60/

15-17 November 2008 - First Impressions of Mooloolaba

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:35:00 +0000

So far…so perfect. Yes, kiddies, the two captains lucked out on this one. Mooloolaba has quickly revealed itself to be a place of almost exactly the sort that we have for many years fantasized about as a retirement spot. There's a lovely beach, several great morning walks, dozens of different kinds of places to get a bite to eat, a supermarket in easy walking distance as well as a bottle shop with specials on Aussie wines and a fridge full of interesting cold beers. Imagine…a country with more than two kinds of beer!

And although Mooloolaba is certainly idyllic for retirees, it seems to be equally popular with young people and families.

Our slip is in the Wharf Marina, a small, friendly operation tucked right into the corner of town. Behind our slip is a small park, buffering the sound of traffic on the adjacent street; Underwater World, 'Queensland's largest oceanarium" is one block to the south; and a Hogsbreath Bar and Grill at the foot of our dock is part of a whole wharf of boutique stores, restaurants, dive and surf shops.

Surprisingly, the oceanfront that looked a bit forbidding on our approach has turned out to be exceptionally attractive. Starting just two blocks away, Mooloolaba's long curving beach is backed by a raised park-like boardwalk with play areas and free BBQ grills.

Well set back behind that strip is a 3-4 block-long esplanade of startlingly cosmopolitan cafes, restaurants, and shops all jumbled together in a street-level mall joining the various ten-story condo buildings. Behind that are several blocks of four and five-story condo complexes in beach colors, more shops and offices, the supermarket and, yes, a McDonald's. Everything looks fresh and modern and was, that first brilliant Saturday morning, jam-packed with people of all ages enjoying themselves. On the beach was some huge family event, having to do with the big Surf Club that anchors the end of the street. The beach and the club were packed with adorable children in bathing suits, evidently participating in swim races in the sea.

The fact that it is a seaside resort town with the above attractions means that it is crowded with people and cars on the weekends and holidays. So far the worst this means for us is the clamor of inebriated young people trying to find their ways home after the bars and clubs close down around 3am! During weekdays, it is much more laid back.

We chose Mooloolaba based on reports of cruisers in previous seasons – going way back friends aboard Maritime Express and Exit Only – as well as because several current friends were planning to be there this season. One of those friends is Peter and Sandi of Otama Song, whom we first got to know in Tonga. Earlier this season, Sandi, a lab pathologist by training, got a job offer to come back to Australia and set up a brand new independent laboratory. Sandi flew here and went to work, while Peter brought their boat to Vuda for work, renewing our friendship. Since the new lab is in nearby Buderim, berthing the boat in Mooloolaba became the obvious choice. Every morning Peter and Sandi get up at the crack of dawn to walk, swim and sip coffee by the beach. We have Peter to thank for making and holding on to our reservation at the Wharf.

14 November 2008 – Southward over the Wide Bay Bar

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:14:00 +0000

Unlike cruisers from the Pacific Northwest (or, of course, Australians) Don and I don't have that much experience with bars. Before you guffaw, remember that I am speaking of the kind of bar that forms across the mouth of a river or estuary, not the kind where a cold draft beer can be had!! Our previous river entrances have been the Chagres in Panama (no bar to speak); Bahia Caraquez in Ecuador (a rather exciting entrance over a bar we didn't fully anticipate); Bahia Montijo, Panama (no bar that we remember); the entrance to Barillas in El Salvador (we crossed on a good day) and, our last memorable bar experience (with its moments of sheer terror) at Altata, Mexico. thanks to Altata, we weren't inclined to take bar crossing casually!

A quick look at the cruising guides of Queensland and New South Wales reveals that most of the anchorages with any kind of protection along Australia's East Coast (with the exception of the Whitsunday Islands) require crossing bars, but the complication is that bars and river courses themselves are comprised of shifting sand and thereby are known to rearrange themselves seasonally and with storms. Hence the importance of Queensland's annual guidebook Beacon to Beacon as well as Australia's very extensive volunteer coast guard and marine rescue organizations who stand by the radio to provide mariners with current weather and up-to-date bar crossing waypoints and information.

Randy of Procyon, being retired USCG, acquired the latest waypoints for our exit across the infamous Wide Bay Bar (WBB) at the bottom of the Sandy Straits and opposite Tin Can Inlet. We dutifully programmed these in only to have the CG Tin Can Bay post advise him the night before to follow the leads! Given that the waypoints called for a bit of a zigzag and the leads didn't, it made for a bit of suspense.

The ideal objective at WBB is to depart several hours before high tide in order to have the most water under the keel with the remaining rising tide providing a margin of error to lift you off should you make an error. Unfortunately, this means the tide is still coming in against you, slowing progress. We raised our anchor shortly after 0600 and motored our behind Procyon with a reefed main. This was a bit early for the tide, but with 61 miles to travel, we were anxious to get started so as to arrive in Mooloolabah in daylight. I'm not sure our early start with two knots against us achieved much head start over boats that left later, closer to slack tide!

The first bit was the diciest, following reverse leads (a range lined up over your shoulder) that directed us parallel to and quite close to waves breaking over the reef right off our starboard beam. Procyon tried following the waypoints which brought him into fairly shallow water. In the end, we both more or less split the difference in the directions. And, of course, just to add spice to the morning, in come a couple of fishing trawlers with their trolling booms lowered!

The next leg required a turn to starboard over the bar itself, theoretically lined up with a white light from a beacon on shore. This is another over the shoulder lead, but instead of two range markers, this was a white light that would show through a slot when you were correctly aligned. In the bouncy conditions and uncertain of what we would actually see in the daylight, trying to find this beacon with binoculars was not fun. But of course, once on it, it was an instance of "AHA!"

Then, as the water reached its shallowest (about 24 feet--not actually all that shallow in the end!), a black squall rolled over us making following any leads a questionable effort. It is just about now, when I was below following our course on the computer navigation and checking online weather, that Don's Dad called us on Skype to see if it was a good time to chat!

All this suspense, and in the endwe got across with little issue. Once the squall rolled onward, the seas settled right down and a vista of sand cliffs, presumably a geological extension of Fraser Island, unfolded on our right hand. Anticipating a wind shift from SE to East, both we and Procyon chose to pinch our way between Double Island Point and Wolf Rock. Unfortunately, the wind – SE @ 10 knots – never did back far enough out of the southeast to let us shut the engine down for more than a few hours. So our final sail was mostly a motorsail!

Our course kept us quite close to the coastline, which, for the first half day, was surprisingly undeveloped. The sand cliffs continued, becoming green-clad bluffs, yet nary a house showed, even though we saw 4WD vehicles driving up and down the beach. Only as we passed Noosa Head did that change. Suddenly the bluffs were densely packed with upscale neighborhoods. It was also about at Noosa Head that we saw our first and only pair of whales!

The increasing urbanization had us a bit worried that we might have chosen badly our finally berthing place. As we approached Mooloolaba, we spied a long white beach backed by ten-storey high rises already cast in shadow by the lowering sun. The entrance channel (no bar to speak of) was surprisingly out on the end of a spit. It was unsettling to look ahead as we entered to see what looked like a dead end. But a hard right turn led us down the channel of the Mooloolah River which parallels the beach for a mile or so past pile berths, fishing vessel berths and various marine services on the right and a handsome canal-based neighborhood of luxury homes and docks worthy of Ft. Lauderdale on the left.

Procyon, stopping over only for a couple of nights, continued upriver a few hundred yards to the crowded anchorage. Our marina – The Wharf – was right at the corner where the river course turns inland. Our friend Peter of Otama Song was waiting to catch our lines as we entered our slip (26*41.03S; 153*07.254E).

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8-13 November 2008 – Garry’s Anchorage & Inskip Point

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:35:00 +0000

Garry's Anchorage (25*37.830'S; 152*58.354'E) is worth a look on Google Earth. Chatting on Skype with our former charter guest Dan Karg in Minnesota who regularly follows our travels, we gave him the lat/long and he pulled it right up, finding an image of our narrow gutter at low tide with about six boats anchored in it.. That's how it was that first night.

By the second evening, as gale warnings began to infiltrate the forecasts, the anchorage had twenty boats seeking shelter there! Amazing how big small anchorages can turn out to be, especially, of course, with local boats who come in knowing the extent of the good depths.

After a day of stripping the cockpit teak and other projects, we enjoyed a nice supper of homemade vegetable soup and settled in for a movie. We had just crawled into bed and begun to doze, when I jerked up with a shriek as cold rain drove in the aft port holes! Wind and rain are not supposed to come up the butt of anchored boats! Don leapt up to the cockpit to find that a squall had blown through bringing a 180-degree reversal to all the anchored boats. There are few things that can cause more trouble than 180-degree wind reversals like that as boat can be driven to sail right over the top of its anchor, potentially pulling it out. Friends in the Virgins Islands had gone on the reef in such a situation, so given the packed boats and the restricted area, nasty visions were dancing through our heads.

Fortunately, although there were a lot of flashing spotlights and a few boats had to re-anchor, the squall caused more tension than havoc. We sat up past midnight waiting for things to settle back down, and I'm not sure anyone ever fully relaxed again for fear of a repeat performance. In fact we did not have another. Oh, we had plenty of rain showers -- some heavy, most misty sprinkles -- and the wind managed to keep us sitting sideways to the current much of the time, making Don's teak project rather challenging. But all in all, once the wind settled into the southeast, Fraser Island gave us all plenty of protection during the five days the gale blew.

The morning after the squall we met the couple on the catamaran off our starboard side. A German couple, Goeth (sp?) and Sylvia came to offer us a ride to the beach since they had noticed our dinghy was on deck. This gave us a nice opportunity to check out the beach and take a stroll with interesting company through the piney forest on a stretch of the island's sand roads. The park signs advised us we might see dingoes, Australia's famous wild dogs, and offered advice on how to behave beginning with "leave them alone" and ending with "defend yourself assertively"! Which I presume is make yourself the alpha individual! We didn't see any dingoes. We did see no-see-ums. In the afternoon, several more boats came in to replace the several that had left. One of them was Procyon. Our second shore-side walk on Monday took us out along the drying flats beside the approach channel where we encountered armies of little crabs that clitter away from us across the sand like robot spiders before spiraling down into the sand when we get too close. Above us, two hawk/eagle types cycled from dead tree branches scanning the shoals for dinner, as well as a squawking white parrot-like bird that could be a local species or an escapee! Who knows!?

Our next few days were actually cruising at our most favorite. We mixed in boat projects, reading, writing, videos and socializing with chatting with family on Skype including a Birthday call to my sister in Vermont and a video session with Don's family including brother Greg, niece Brooke and her husband Nathan, and nephew Adam who were in Morristown with Don's parents for the sad occasion of the passing of Greg's father-in-law. As is often the case, Dick had been failing for some time, so his passing, hard as it always is, came as a release for all. We were sorry for the occasion, but happy to have to opportunity to "see" so much family that we hadn't seen in some time. We got to congratulate Brooke face to face on her pregnancy. Well, at least we thought it was face to face. We found out at the end of the half hour they hadn't been receiving our video! No one had mentioned it!

We'd been in Garry's for six nights before the weather began to ease up enough to think about poking our noses out. Larders were getting pretty thin for most of us as we had none of us imagined getting caught between ports for so long! With Internet weather available to all of us via our handy-dandy cellular broadband modems, we could not only follow the forecasts, but actually watch live data of wind speeds and radar rainfall, (invariably higher than the forecasts!) This led to as much group calculating as if we had been heading off on a major crossing. Well, with the infamous Wide Bay Bar to cross in order to get out to sea and tides to factor in, wind angle and distance to travel as we head south to Mooloolaba, there is plenty to calculate.

In the end, we raised anchor about 10:45 this morning to travel south to Inskip Point, from where one can decide whether or not to go out the Wide Bay Bar, something we are tentatively planning for tomorrow morning. Last minute decision-making had taken place over coffee and muffins aboard Whisper (which, no, folks, is not my old Whisper, but Duncan and Robin's lovely Hallberg Rassy 42!), and, in the end, Procyon and Tackless left, while Whisper stayed.

They must have known something they didn't share! Almost no sooner than we got out the gutter of Garry's anchorage than the rain returned. I built a teepee of sorts over my laptop which we needed in the cockpit for navigation down the narrow channel, especially when the rain made the ranges and marks hard to see. We had the tide with us, BUT that meant it was against the wind, which added up to choppy waves. It is a very bizarre sensation to make maybe 1.5 knots through the water, practically a standstill, yet be actually traveling 5+ over ground toward your destination! In the end, it took us just two hours to reach the Inskip anchorage (25*48S; 153*02E), and of course, the sky promptly cleared.

This very well could be our last open anchorage aboard Tackless II! Our objective tomorrow…or possibly Saturday if the wind doesn't back just a bit more out of the southeast tomorrow…is the Wharf Marina in Mooloolaba. Although it is said to be a lovely facility, it is also said to be in the midst of a tourist center. Marinas are never our first choice, but it is a necessary evil for showing the boat to prospective buyers. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Meanwhile, a fat, buttery full moon rose over Wide Bay Bar this evening. Although the tidal currents continue to have their way with the boat with respect to the wind, we are so far sitting quite calmly. A huge shallow estuary opens to the south with the lights of boats willing to be pinned in by low tide twinkling from Pelican Anchorage. To the north are the sand bars and channels of the Sandy Straits down which we have come. To the west is Tin Can Inlet, which Avior calls home, and to the east is Wide Bay Bar. A veritable crossroads. It is a lovely spot.

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7-8 November 2008 – Sandy Straits

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:23:00 +0000

Morning comes early to Queensland, which doesn't observe daylight savings. In the anchorage outside Port Bundaberg Marina, we were up at 0430 and underway shortly after 0500. Even so, we were barely in the middle of a pack of about a dozen boats making their way out the channel and turning south for the Sandy Straits! Guess it looked like a good weather window, eh?!

The first forty miles down Hervey Bay to the mouth of the Straits was easy sailing in open water in about 10 knots of wind just aft of the beam. However, once we passed the northern fairway beacon (25*08.41S; 152*49.57E), the trip became one of navigating carefully from beacon to beacon (or buoy to buoy), hence the name of Queensland's indispensable cruising guide. The northern section was still pretty easy going as we glided past Big Woody Island and Little Woody, places we'd thought we might stop overnight.

But it was early yet, barely noon, and we thought we could easily get further. Then came a later weather report with warnings of a trough and developing winds that would cycle right around! I swear, I have never been in a place where the weather reports change so quickly and so radically.

We had hoped to stop at Kingfisher Resort (www.kingfisherbay.com), a famous eco-resort often used by cruisers as a base for exploring Fraser Island. It has a restaurant, pool, plus rental jeeps and tours, and was a place we could have easily whiled away a few days. But not in northerlies. Of all the dozen or so anchorages shown along the western shore of Fraser Island, they are all, like Kingfisher, suitable for the prevailing easterly tradewinds only. Unfortunately the whole western edge of the straights is virtually inaccessible thanks to sand bars, shoals and mangrove islets, except where a few rivers and creeks penetrate. Most of these are not accessible for boats of any substantial draft, a major exception being the Mary River up which we could have like gone like Procyon did. But we are pretty focused on getting south to Mooloolabah where our agent has a couple of clients waiting to see the boat.

Studying the charts, we realized there were hardly any anchorages offering protection for the forecast northerlies, let alone for the westerly and southwesterly winds that would follow in the cycle back to southeast. Our best bet looked to be Bookar Island and the flooding tide helpfully accelerated our pace down the narrowing channel. However, as we looked further down the chart, we realized the channel beyond Bookar got very shallow in a short, snake-y section, and to get over THAT, we would need high tide. Since we were arriving at Bookar just before high tide, that meant high tide the next day would be an hour later, too close to sunset to lay the next and best possible anchorage – known as Garry's Anchorage – in a channel behind Stewart Island. Added to that, Bookar was already looking pretty exposed.

So, despite the already long day, we decided the prudent decision was to push on through the shallow section right then and make Garry's before sunset. We are very glad we did. The shallow section was quite shallow; we saw only 12 feet at several points and that was at high tide. Tides here regularly range up to two meters, which doesn't leave much left over. But I will say that the channel is well marked, and my electronic charts, in this case BSB charts leant to me by Jim of Avior and displayed on The CapN, were very accurate (better than CMap on MaxSea). Of course, we also had the Beacon to Beacon (which for some reason doesn't show depth!) as well as the great Queensland Maritime Safety Charts.

Also working in our favor was the fact that the effect of the tides on the Straits changes at its halfway point, Sheridan Flats, just opposite Bookar Island. In other words, the rising tide floods the straits from both ends, meeting in the middle, and likewise drains them in opposite directions. By passing Bookar and the flats at high tide, we let go the advantage of the incoming tide just in time to pick up the advantage of the outgoing tide ebbing southward! We scooted over the tricky section having wisely dropped the main, which we would have had to gybe back and forth for every twist and turn, and coasted into Garry's Anchorage about an hour before sunset.

Garry's Anchorage is a narrow semicircular channel running between Fraser Island and small, inset Stewart Island. It was not encouraging to see our friends Duncan and Robin on Whisper coming back out as we approached. According to the cruising guides, Garry's Anchorage can be entered from either the north or south opening, but Whisper had gone aground on their first try and only with luck managed to get off again before the tide went down any further! With our shallower draft (5' as opposed to 6'7"), we proceeded to give it a try. The channel was much narrower and shallower than we had imagined, but we found a spot between two power boats with about fifteen feet of water, depth enough to see us through even the full moon low tide next Wednesday if we stay that long!

After a settled night, the wind has been building as advertised. The power boats left on the early morning tide, but a number of sailboats have sought shelter in here from the building weather, including Duncan and Robin of Whisper who were willing to give it another go in the light of day. When the tide goes down, great expanses of sand flats are exposed all around us, and the wind in the trees behinds us sounds like rushing water. There are all sorts of birds around with unfamiliar calls, and the beach is littered with the debris of silvered limbs. Don is stripping the old Cetol from the cockpit teak that has looked like crap since Willie's crew pulled the tape from the paint job back in Fiji! And I, as ever, am working away on the computer.

28 October – 6 November, 2008 – the Port2Port in Bundaberg

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 07:39:00 +0000

Our first week in Australia was dedicated almost wholly to the arrival festivities of the Bundaberg Cruising Yacht Club's annual Port2Port Rally held at the Bundaberg Port Marina. The BCYC was formed in 2000 specifically for the purpose of sponsoring this rally to attract Pacific cruising boats to the Port of Bundaberg, which is situated up the Burnett River off Hervey Bay in Queensland at 24*45.58S 152*23.28E. This year the rally drew some forty boats, departing from two ports in Vanuatu and two in New Caledonia.

Port Bundaberg is an enticing arrival port because, unlike many Australian ports whose approaches can be complicated by shifting river bars, the approach up the Burnett River, leading in from the protected waters of Hervey Bay, is manageable in virtually all conditions, including, as we saw, at night. It is also far enough north that yachts coming from the tropics cross in the Coral Sea, north of the unpredictable weather generated by the Tasman Sea to the south. This had weighed on our minds because a boat we had met and socialized with in Vuda Point had been lost a few months ago in bad weather a mere 150 nm outside of Brisbane. Of course, the Coral Sea route was not without its hazards. One rally boat, Hot Ice, hit a reef and had to be abandoned. Fortunately for it's crew, they were on one of the radio nets at the time, and rescue was organized expeditiously.

Aboard Tackless II, we had very mixed feelings about doing another rally, since sailing to any kind of schedule can only mean trouble, as we were reminded in our trip from Port Vila to Noumea last month. However, the Port2Port Rally takes a slightly different approach. Participants are urged to TRY to arrive within a three-day window prior to the start of the rally parties, leaving departure time up to each individual boat. The organizers provide a tremendous amount of clear, useful information by email prior to departure, run an excellent radio sked twice a day from the 18th to the 29th, but don't collect entry fees until you actually arrive. Therefore, if you don't like the weather, you simply don't come! This year most Port2Port boats left over a span of eight or ten days!

Tackless II was called from the quarantine anchorage to the quarantine dock mid-morning. This gave us plenty of time to spiff up the boat…rather like cleaning for the housekeeper! Customs and immigration were mere formalities since we had applied for visas online in advance and also had printed out the customs papers from the Internet and pre-filled them out. It is Quarantine that is the big deal in Australia. Modern day Australia is paying heavily for the past introduction of foreign species – both ignorantly and inadvertently – that have wreaked havoc with its fragile ecosystem (read Jared Diamond's book Collapse.) We are not allowed to bring in any fresh fruits or vegetables, meat, eggs, seeds, dried beans or related products, and wood and fiber crafts from the islands are a concern as well. There was a lot of suspense about what we would be allowed to keep, but it proved wise just to wait and see (beyond the very obvious), because we were allowed to keep a lot of things I'd thought they would take. In our case the officers were more worked up by some bugs they found in a bag of slivered almonds, a fluttery character that they eventually identified as a harmless warehouse moth. All in all it was a very professional and courteous entry.

In the course of the following week there were: a spaghetti night, a BBQ night, a welcome breakfast sponsored by the Bundaberg Regional council, a curry night, an afternoon BBQ sponsored by the marina, a "Beer, Prawn and Oyster" night (the marina is associated with a seafood wholesaler), a pot luck evening, and finally a fancy End of Passage dinner with yummy hors d'oeuvres and free Dark and Stormy's (a rum cocktail famously made with the locally brewed Bundaberg rum…although, since the distillery failed to provide the rum, the evening's supply was actually made with Captain Morgan dark!...Yay! More on Bundaberg rum later.) Each of these events was more than affordable and took place around eleven huge round tables in a big tent set up on the marina lawn! The cruisers mixed and mingled (we all had name tags, bless 'em) and sorted out into subgroups of new and old friends.

We had around us quite the circle of friends from the past few seasons, including, Randy and Sheri of Procyon, Tom & Bette Lee of Quantum Leap, Robin and Duncan of Whisper (who actually crossed from Mexico when we did). Tricky and Jane of Lionheart, Jan and Lee of La Boheme, and this year's buddies, Jim and Paula of Avior, among many others.

The day after our arrival, Tom and Bette Lee, who had arrived early and rented a car, conducted us into Bundaberg for our first exposure to this very pleasant Queensland town. Lonely Planet describes Bundaberg as "a country town that feels oh-so two centuries ago." I don't know about that, but to us it felt just right. Down the center of town is a wide boulevard with lanes divided by a tree-shaded parking island and intersections had been attractively bricked. We learned later that there are plenty of modern shopping malls around, but, despite them, downtown still seemed plenty healthy.

Our primary stop was the Telstra Phone store where, like most of our pals, we got a local phone, a chip for my T-Mobile GSM phone, and a cellular-broadband modem for the computer. We were quite grateful for the devalued Aussie $ when we got the total. But it sure has been money well spent, particularly the broadband modem which is so fast we can actually do video Skype!

The next day we met our yacht broker, Anita Farine, who was up from Scarborough to meet several clients. Yes, you read that correctly: Yacht Broker. It is something we have been considering almost from leaving Mexico, and in the end, with many, many mixed feelings, we have decided to put Tackless II on the market here in Australia. We have been repeatedly told there is a good market for our kind of boat here. That market was, of course, very strong up until a month ago, when the world economy went topsy-turvy and the Aussie dollar dropped from USD.95 to USD.60! This, of course, is good news for our living expenses here (especially as we all now only have half as many USDs!), but it is not good news for the boat market. If you'd like to see Tackless II's listing, you can find it at http://farine.net.au/sail/sb195/double.html . If you would like to BUY Tackless II, contact us directly ASAP at svtacklessii AT yahoo.com. (Address is written that way so spammers can scan it, but you know what to do!)

The other big highlight of the Rally week for us was the Monster Bilge Sale – the equivalent of a yard sale to landlubbers. Don and I wheeled up several cart loads of junk…er treasures…about half of which we actually sold. Can't say we made a whole lot of money, but bit by bit we are emptying out Tackless II's crammed lockers. I will say that we didn't BUY anything! Our other strategy for clearing the boat out involved several trips to the Post Office to send back some of the souvenirs we have collected.

Sightseeing in Bundaberg
Sunday morning, the rally organizers had arranged a bus to take us to the vegetable market, held on the unusually named grounds of the Shalom Catholic High School! Don gave this trip a bye, which was a shame as there was a vendor specializing in macadamia and other nuts (which he would have enjoyed!), but I managed to load up two bags full of fresh produce on my own! On the way back, the bus driver took us on a side trip to Bagara, an up-and-coming seaside resort town just south of Bundy. Very pretty, but development is opting for "high rise" (6 or so stories) condos which will milk the real estate but fast defeat the charm.

On Monday we boarded another bus for a tour of Bundaberg's two great claims to fame, its Rum Distillery and Ginger Beer Brewery.

We started at the Ginger Beer factory where is proudly brewed natural ginger beer, as well as sarsaparilla (root beer), a lemon-lime drink, an apple ale, a peach ale, and several others.

Who knew this stuff was originally brewed like beer (and still is here!)? We got to taste all the products, including the diet versions, and all the ones we remember were very tasty, especially the ginger beer and sarsaparilla, of which we carted home a six-pack. Sadly, the diet versions did nothing for us.

We wish we could be as enthusiastic about the rum. Bundaberg rum, to a Caribbean-trained palate, is quite simply vile stuff! Our guide, the Port2Port volunteer Judy, must have encountered this before with cruisers arriving from the east, because she promoted more heavily their special liqueur – "only available from the factory." The factory tour itself was a little disappointing. In fact both factory tours were actually pseudo tours, cute little displays instead of the real thing. (The real thing can be had at the rum distillery, but it wasn't on our agenda. Perhaps because it calls for closed shoes and so few cruisers have any!) But it did also end up with free tastings. Each of us got a card entitling us to two tastes. I tried the new Bundaberg Red, in hopes it would be smoother. Better, but not a winner. We all tried the liqueur, which is a blend of rum, caramel, chocolate and licorice (I think, or cloves…something exotic), and it was good enough that almost every couple bought at least one bottle. Sadly, they don't offer tastes, free or otherwise, of their two more expensive products that MIGHT have been better tasting. But then, who needs an expensive rum!

After the tours, the bus dropped us all first at Bunnings, a Home Depot-type hardware outlet, and then at a grocery store, which we pretty well besieged. Cruisers who have been in the islands for a few months kind of lose all sense of proportion when exposed to first-world markets like this. So it is probably a good thing that they didn't take us to the Woolworths, which in Australia is a huge mega-market (we went there later with friends!), because they would never have got us all out again!

Between the soda six-packs, the booze cartons and the grocery bags, the return bus was pretty loaded, but this driver, like Sunday's driver, wanted to give us a little something extra, so he drove us to the lookout atop the "Hummock." The Hummock is the closest thing Bundaberg has to a hill. Visually, it is a pimple on the very gently rolling flat cane fields, fields that look like a cross between Indiana and Fiji…in other words tidy mid-west farm fields with sugar cane and palm trees! Historically, the Hummock is actually a very ancient volcano, responsible for all the rich soil hereabouts, and as you might guess is densely built up with houses in search of the only "view" in town!

The Port2Port week finally wound down on Tuesday and boats began taking off. Avior, back in their home cruising grounds, took off early for a rendezvous with friends at Lady Musgrave, a coral atoll about 100kms north that is the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef. Quantum Leap headed out for Mooloolaba, which is our eventual destination, where they will store the boat and head home. Procyon, who plans to explore as far south as Tasmania over the summer, got a jump on us by sailing south on Tuesday for the Sandy Straits where they have ended up exploring up the Mary River. It doesn't take long for the gang to disperse!

Saddled with two more paid-for days in the marina, we hung on a bit longer. Our reward was a ride up the Burnett River with Tricky and Jane aboard Lionheart. Rivers are quintessential Aussie experiences. This one wound about four miles inland through mangroves and cane fields to the Midtown Marina and mooring field right in the heart of Bundaberg proper before being blocked by a bridge and railroad trestle. Tricky did a great job following the beacons up the river course. That it was a tricky route was attested to by our passing one of the rally boats stuck fast in a shoal area! (We sent the marina guys back for them!) With Lionheart moored bow and stern in the middle of the river, Tricky and Jane will do their own dispersing, taking off for a week visiting Tricky's brother in Rockhampton, about three hours north. Tricky and Jane (or "the kids" as we call them!) plan to go back to work for several years to build up a world cruising kitty. It had looked like they might be based with us in Mooloolaba as Tricky plans to become a catamaran sales agent, but recently it's been sounding more like Brisbane might be where they tie up.

Tuesday, the day we rode on Lionheart was a very big day in Australia. Yes, yes, it was a very big day in the USA as well, only the elections wouldn't even get going for several hours yet. But here in Australia, Tuesday the 4th was Melbourne Cup Day! Melbourne Cup Day is said to rank second in importance to Christmas on the Aussie calendar, and while it is not actually a holiday, "no one works." Instead they dress up, including fancy hats, and find themselves a Melbourne Cup Party. Presumably, in Melbourne they actually go to the Melbourne Cup! What is the Melbourne cup? It is a horse race on par with the Kentucky Derby.

We did not actually get to a party, but we did lunch at a pub in town that was making a deal of the race. We had to eat on the sidewalk as all the tables were reserved, but Don and I did nip in at race time to watch the race itself. It loses just a little when you have no clue which horse is which, but it was a huge field, maybe eighteen or twenty! And the track was grass! With such a huge field, the race was very exciting (seemed long, too!) and the finish came down to the leader being caught by a charging grey. It was a nose to nose photo finish, and I sure saw nothing to distinguish which was the winner! Wow. It almost makes up for not having seen a kangaroo yet. (We've been walking early; I guess we need to walk late!)

The American Elections
The American elections dominated hearts and minds and TV sets on Wednesday. Duncan and Robin of Whisper staked out a table for the day in Baltimore's, the very nice restaurant at the marina, and watched the returns come in over a long bottle of white wine. We checked in on Yahoo now and again and stuck our noses into Baltimore's each time we passed. By early afternoon, it was a done deal, so we had Duncan and Robin to Tackless for a evening celebration to toast our new president -- CONGRATULATIONS, OBAMA! And congratulations America, on making a choice for change!

Departing Bundaberg
So, here we are. It is Thursday evening, the 6th of November. We have backed off the dock and are anchored not too far from where we were our first night. Tomorrow, we start our trip south through Hervey Bay and the Sandy Straits., a sinuous braid of sand banks and navigable channels squeezed between Frasier Island and the Queensland coast. Piled around me are charts, the Beacon to Beacon guidebook, Alan Lucas' Coral Coast Cruising Guide, lists of way points and bearings, and routes on two electronic charting programs. Leaving a marina is always traumatic!

27 October 2008 - Day 7 on the Road to Oz

noreply@blogger.com (Tackless II) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:44:00 +0000

Our last night the wind went aft meaning that for the first time on a voyage on which we expected to sail downwind most of the way, we were sailing down wind for the FIRST TIME! It became rolly and obnoxious and made us really appreciate the several exceptionally nice days of sailing we did have...even with the spate of bad weather. In the morning, we encountered east Australia's southbound current, which, like America's Gulf Stream, can stir up quite a nasty sea in any southerly wind. Actually, it was for this reason we'd picked the weather window we did, since the winds were relatively light as we crossed. Still we were glad to push out the other side and get smoother sailing as we approached and rounded Break Sea Spit into Hervey Bay.

Actually, except for calmer seas, bottom soundings, and a few more seabirds, there was nothing to suggest we were approaching land of any size, let a lone a huge continent. Hervey Bay is a big wedge of water off the Queensland coast that is framed by Frasier Island, the worlds largest sand island. Again, no sight of it. The wind went light, and in our impatience to arrive, we fired up the engine. Night fell after another handsome sunset and still no hint of Australia. Finally about 8pm local time, we began to see some lights in the general direction of our waypoint.

The last leg of our trip, four miles up the approach channel of the Burnett River in the dark, was surreal. The channel is marked by pairs of powerful flashing green and red lights which leaves you feeling like you are landing a 747 on a runway, and because the channel extends well out into the bay, most of its length you still have water on either side! Once inside the lights were fewer and the dark darker. We actually passed the quarantine anchorage on the first go and then had to backtrack. Although the Port Bundaberg Marina just upriver was brightly lit, it actually made it harder to nose our way in to the small anchorage where three other boats already had the hook down. We shut down, toasted our arrival with a celebratory cocktail, and put our heads down, Don grousing that he would have to keep some kind of watch during the night in such close quarters. The next thing we knew, it was daylight!

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