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

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

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!

 

December 10 – Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo

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

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

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….

(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/