Back business

Our friend Peter rang this morning, looking for a coffee and a chat, both of which we can usually manage. Sydney swelters, but we press on with life’s essentials. However today was different, a bit special. Alex left early to see a neurosurgeon about his back. Peter registered the size of the shock correctly. “Is nothing in this world stable? Next you’ll be telling me he’s giving up the fags!” Then he congratulated me. Wrong. Alex doesn’t do anything until he’s ready, and that includes dealing with the lower back pain which frames everything he does, every day.

In the decade we’ve been together he’s managed (as they say) his unreliable spine with a mixture of stoicism and contempt and, when the pain is acute, with hard core painkillers and withdrawal into an inaccessible emotional space just big enough for him. That last bit drives me nuts. So his appointment with a neurosurgeon was a big deal, for both of us.  

For years now he has swatted off my helpful suggestions about how he could “fix” his back. Exercise, I’ve demanded. It works for other people – why not you? I’ve raged, I’ve pleaded. Do something. But Alex is a fatalist by inclination, and Eastern European by birth (the two are somewhat related). He doesn’t want pity. Nor does he want to be told what to do. In his situation, I couldn’t not do something, couldn’t not act to alter the odds. I don’t want to believe that things can’t get better. When he and Peter started walking and swimming together a year or so ago, and he began to feel fitter, it had nothing to do with me, which was the beauty of their arrangement. But of course I secretly took some credit for his physical improvement. That made it all the harder when, just before we were due to leave for the Pacific last May, his back went out. Something silly, something small. That’s all it takes. He took to his bed, did what he needed to do. I was the one who was devastated.

Alex had a back operation 20 years ago when the technology was much more primitive and the risk of coming out of the theatre unable to walk was very real, and very scary. Seeing a neurosurgeon today was a big move. It was about being ready to contemplate something radical, again. He’s 63, with oceans to cross and the time to do it. That’s why he went to see the doctor this morning. Where it goes from here is his business. My business is to keep him company, and when that’s not required, deal with it.

Time out

Believe it or not, there are still places in the developed world where you might as well not bother bringing your laptop or whatever gizmo you connect with. That's where we've been, one of those places. I’m not complaining. The day when we get good enough internet reception at our beach house in New Zealand will be a day to regret.

The house sits on the edge of a grey sandy beach, looking out towards Kawau Island. People don’t come to this benign sweep of coastline for the beach action per se. Occasionally (and this summer, when the weather systems seem to have lost all self-control, saw two such occasions) we get stung by the tail of a tropical cyclone which stirs up the sea and shifts about loose chunks of sandstone and mud. But mostly, when the barometer is steady, you can’t find a better place for boating or letting young children loose to play in the water or around the rocks.

My parents starting coming here with me, my sister and two brothers in 1965. Since then the trees they planted have grown huge and there’s a “new” bunkhouse, built 20 years ago when more babies demanded more beds. But not much else has changed. Photos from one decade are interchangeable with those taken in any other, if you discount the growing/aging cycle of the human players. See there the tanned bodies sprawled across the veranda, books in hand; the sailing dinghies and kayaks ready to roll down the ramp into the high tide; the fringing pohutakawas and agapanthus, and hydrangeas in bluest of bloom; the kids squashed together on divans, playing cards, or batting a shuttlecock and wearing out the grass in the same old places; the boys (usually) feeding wood into the barbecue and downing cold beers; the girls (usually) slicing and chopping, stripping husks off sweetcorn…memories which bind three generations now.

 

We’ve never had a television at the beach and there’s still no dishwasher because we’re on tank water (which is why until very recently there wasn’t a decent shower in the place). The dish-washing roster and narrowness of the kitchen manufacture family closeness - the kitchen is so ridiculously small that to be in it with one other person is an intimate act. My mother won't tolerate any loose talk of alterations (“over my dead body”, she says, and my architect brother-in-law bites his tongue, biding his time). Hence, by default, the house has become fashionably retro. A couple of years ago some slick creative boys came through, salivating, and said it was exactly the location they were looking for to shoot a television ad. They went ahead with the ad (for a car – eh?) and apparently it’s a big hit, but living in Australia as we do, I’ve never seen it.  

A friend whose family holidayed with us over several summers when our parents were young and shiny popped by at the end of January. He hadn’t been inside our beach house since his father died when he was a boy. After that happened, everything to do with his parents and mine seemed frozen in time, like Camelot. I walked Mike through the rooms (it didn’t take a minute) and watched his mouth drop. “It’s so small,” he said, quietly. Could it be that all we both remembered about those golden years had really happened in such a tiny place? I’ve often wondered about that myself. Yet the evidence suggests that legend-making is still strong at the beach house – in inverse proportion, perhaps, to the availability of mod cons.

It's a hard rain

The heavy rains are moving south. Now Brisbane is expecting a deluge, getting out the sandbags. Here in Sydney we’ve had a wet summer, as was predicted, but nothing remotely like Queensland’s catastrophe. Queensland always feels like another country, but through Kukka we learned something of the lie of the land around Bundaberg. When Bundaberg was the first Queensland city to be flooded just before New Year we thought immediately of our sailing friends George and Kathleen who had left their beautiful wooden boat Kalalau moored at the mid-town marina. Photos on the internet showed that when the Burnett river rose to its highest level in 50 years nothing was left of the marina,  so when George and Kathleen arrived back in Australia on 2 January they had good reason to fear that they had lost their boat.

Over the past week they’ve kept us in touch with their story. It has a happy ending. Kalalau is not among the 25 or 30 boats which have disappeared without a trace from Bundaberg, some taken out to sea, others no doubt on the bottom of the river. Nor was she half sunk, sitting on a rock, or marooned in a sugar cane-field. She washed up among the mangroves on an island in the river and in the last couple of days has been salvaged by an expert local crew. Here she is being dragged through the mud and back into her element. She not only floated, but her marvelous teak hull was tight. Hallelujah, wrote George.  No water in the bilges! She looks like a battle-scarred veteran, they say, but nothing, fingers crossed, which can’t be repaired further down the track. I hope we meet Kalalau one day again on the water. That will be a precious moment. 

This morning’s news has Toowoomba, just west of Brisbane, knocked out by a violent flash flood.  People have drowned, swept from their cars and their houses. I watched a You Tube video of a solid young man in a singlet and shorts hanging on for dear life to a wire netting fence. A couple of rescue workers got to him, pinned him against the fence and stopped him from being pulled under the ugly, angry, dirty water. He looked stunned when they finally escorted him to safe ground. He was in town somewhere, somewhere normally hard and dry (until very recently Toowoomba was in drought). Was he driving his car when he saw the water coming for him? Was it a rainstorm that fell out of the sky, or did the river – what’s the name of the river near Toowoomba? – take him from behind like a surprise cavalcade? There’s another image of a white van upended and being pulled along like a bath toy on a body of water moving so fast it is throwing up a wake as it rushes around power poles and other obstacles. Such weird things are happening in Australia this summer, things you just don’t expect.

Quiet time

The calmness which has settled over our corner of the world since Boxing Day is almost as soothing as being afloat. Morning traffic along Darling Street is non-existent till nine or even ten o’clock. The drunks, whose pavement antics are the price we pay for living so close to restaurants and a pub with 2 am closing, have gone somewhere else to disturb the peace in the early hours. Many small shops are shut and we who haven’t left town are none the worse for it. It feels like Sundays used to before they became just like every other day.

You’d think by now I’d be used to idling, to the feel of a day with no buses to catch, no traffic jams to fume about, no deadlines to meet, no need to stress or ever go into over-drive. I am, but still there’s something extra pleasant about these in-between days, the days which bridge the end of one commercial year and the beginning of another. Discounting the frenzy which is New Year’s Eve in Sydney, when the fireworks draw big crowds to the parks around Balmain’s foreshore, these are days without many other people in them, which move slowly and gently and when nothing seems urgent. They resist organization and are open to suggestion. As I say, almost like cruising.

To make up for the absence of the sea and the horizon, I have a kitchen and a garden. Our tomatoes are ripening slowly and the beans and capsicums are even slower off the mark, but we do have a whole bed of lettuce and other green leaves plus basil, mint, parsley, chives etc  to make into salads to go with the ham (still the ham!). I cooked up a batch of apricot jam with fruit leftover from Christmas Day’s poaching. There’s a box of cherries in the fridge which seems bottomless. We’ve barely touched the Christmas cake yet, but where, I asked myself, could be the harm in assembling another batch of Christmas mince pies before the season for eating them is declared over? 

Panzanella is easy summer food - bread soaked in vinegar and mixed with tomatoes, basil, red onions, oil and s&p

Mini Christmas mince pies for snacking with a brew (tea, that is)

 About three days ago we hung a handsome barometer (my Christmas present from Alex)  in a spot where I can check it regularly. Because we've had a run of golden weather,  I didn’t worry at first when the needle was unusually steady. But yesterday a cool change pushed through, bringing heavy rain with thunder and lightning. The barometer’s needle still didn’t budge. I felt a bit stormy myself.

As soon as the (reputable) shop where Alex bought it re-opens we’ll be straight over to return it. Suddenly I’m a consumer with an urgent mission. Pity. A week of Sundays is too short. 

There are other brews in the house

Sydney to Hobart

Out the back of the Wooden Boat Centre, on the Huon River, Tasmania

We’ve entered the calm after the Christmas storm. Alex and I are home alone, with our various offspring accounted for (in Morocco, in Laos, camping, working or recovering from work – take your pick) but not present. We have a fridge full of Christmas ham and sweet leftovers and our house is scented with fresh pine needles and November lilies. Lovely. Who cares about the weather?

A southerly buster came through last night, and for the next few days, if the forecast is right, there won’t be much joy for southbound sailors. We watched yesterday’s start of the Sydney to Hobart race from the water - not on Kukka but on our friend Wayne’s deep sea fishing boat (the spectator event favors a boat with a big engine). We followed the fleet out through the heads and then (throwing fuel consumption to the winds) kept up with the race leaders as far as Botany Bay. What a blast to pace the maxi yachts Loyal and Wild Oats as they sliced through the water at about 14 knots in a light north-westerly breeze. The crew lining the rails knew their moment in the sun would be short though. By the time Wayne turned his boat back towards Sydney, the horizon to the south was filling in with towering cumulus clouds. I’m much too much of a softie to go ocean racing, but I’ll follow the race progress on-line and cross my fingers that by next weekend every competitor will have arrived safely in the Derwent and be perched at the bar of the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania or the Shipwright’s Arms (aka Shippies) Hotel.  Either would do the job nicely. 

The Shipwright's Arms, Battery Point, Hobart

We were drinking at both these establishments just a week ago with a couple of Sandy Bay locals, John and Ange, lately of S/V Nada. Alex and I fitted in a quick trip to Hobart before Christmas, partly to catch up with John and Ange whose company we’d enjoyed so much in Vanuatu and partly to see the crew of Pelagic which has increased by one since Mike, Alisa and Elias sailed into Sydney harbour to see us and the New Year’s Eve fireworks a year ago en route to Tasmania.

Mike, Alisa and Eric

Mike and Eric

Baby Eric (above) was born in Hobart in very late April (or was it May?), and we thought it was high time we made his acquaintance, brought his big brother some new books and topped up our friendship with his parents before they moved on again.  Mike and Alisa are people you don’t want to lose track of. They're onto something good - each other, and a very immediate sense of what being alive adds up to and how to play that against the odds. You learn that stuff in Alaska, I believe.

Elias and his pony make the summit of Mt Wellington

Elias plays with Eric on Pelagic

Pelagic is on the market, and after a nearly a year of doing short-term house-sits around Hobart, Mike and Alisa are desperate to get onto their next boat. At the moment, it has to be steel, but.... what boat search does not involve as many twists and turns as an episode of The Wire (yes, we are watching the second series, and no, you may not call us any evening this week)?

Ange buys pink-eye potatoes at a rooadside stall for Christmas Day

I like to uncover a new place slowly.  I'd never been to Hobart before, and  it might have been enough to be introduced to the town by friends, both local and imported (as well as through writer Peter Timms' nice book on Hobart, kindly passed my way by Kathy Bail).  But Tasmania, as everyone knows, is more about about country than town. John and Ange took matters in hand  and drove us out for the day so we had more to rave about when we got home than the abundance of Hobart's second-hand bookshops, the headiness of its gardens (who ever knew that fuchsias could grow so abundantly and lusciously?) and the excellence of the bread and coffee at Jackman and McRoss (pictured below).

We headed south, following the ins and outs of the d'Entrecasteaux channel and then up the Huon river valley to the Tahune Air Walk.. How I wished my dear dad had been with me as I tried my best to identify various wondrous trees from high above the forest floor. A farm forester’s daughter ought to know better, but she doesn’t. She still has to read the labels on the bottom of the turned bowls at the Salamanca market to tell myrtle from sassafras.

The Huon river from the Air Walk

John and I drop coins onto the Wishing Tree

We chanced upon a sheep's milk producer called Grandvewe - heaven on tasting toothpicks. I left with yoghurt, curd and hard cheeses and a book on cheese-making.  I couldn't get enough of the ample expanses of the d’Entrecasteaux channel. Its colours reminded me of New Zealand, of course. In comparison, the mainstay cruising grounds for Sydney sailors, Pittwater and the Hawkesbury river, much as I love them, seem cramped and crowded. At Franklin, on the Huon river, we stopped by the Wooden Boat Centre, a small operation with a very strong whiff of an oily rag about it. The Sydney chef Tetsuya is having a classic motor yacht built there, and. I'd bet that his commission is probably keeping the place alive right now. I felt an odd sadness running my hands over the silky Huon pine planking of his boat, knowing from the blurb that its permanent home will be Pittwater. Silly I know, but that seems to me like keeping an exotic animal in a suburban backyard. I'm beginning to develop strong feelings about boats.

Tetsuaya's boat under construction

She'll look very like this when she's finished

Idyllic conditions

When you are on a boat,  there are several very satisfying measures of progress. You can track how far you’ve sailed in terms of miles covered, or in hours out from port, or in the change of latitude and/or longitude. Even if, at the end of a day’s sailing, you put down the pick in an anchorage which wouldn't have been your first choice at the beginning of the day, there’s always the satisfaction of having arrived safely.

Back on land, I cover a lot more distance, and much more quickly than at sea, but I don’t have the same simple – or is it simplistic? - sense of progress. I now struggle to keep a course in a way I never did during the cruising season, and on some days I make embarrassingly heavy weather of what, to an objective observer, must seem the most idyllic conditions.

People talk dreamily of going with the flow, as if nothing could be more pleasant or desirable, but in reality, we’ve been taught - and conditioned - to drive ourselves forward, to resist the current, to swim against the tide.  I’m a city girl, and in the city, if you go with the flow you get washed down the storm drain.  I’d like to think I can profit from, not to mention be grateful for this much gentler, and relatively stress-free period of my life, with its unlimited room for turning. I don’t know why the feeling of drifting, or of going around in circles, should be as unsettling as it is. What I do know is that there are days when I pine for the straight forward satisfaction of a job well done, or Progress Made. How very Protestant!

These next few months look like being a waiting game. First, we wait for some interest in Kukka, which could come sooner, or it could come later. She is now with the Sydney broker Windcraft. She’s also featured on several local and international boats-for-sale websites including Yachtworld and, thanks to Agnes, the popular Swedish site Blocket. She’s more than ready to meet new admirers, with no part of her having escaped Alex’s fastidious attention. While I was in New Zealand, he and Bertil solved a superficial wear-and-tear problem – suffice to say that when a man is thrown across a cabin in a gale, something has to give and in this case, it wasn’t just the man.  She’s even got new fender covers (I think the skipper was right not to wait until I felt the urge to run up replacements on the sewing machine – though I remember how intrigued he was last year to learn from a crafty woman on a Clipper launch of how she saved megabucks by making her own fender covers from the chopped-off legs of cheap over-sized track pants.)

I found myself looking at Kukka differently on my return from NZ, not just because absence freshens the eyes, but also because I’d been looking closely at another boat….Grace, the HR46 for sale in Auckland. Grace is a beauty too and, given the right circumstances, I would be more than happy to spend the next few years living aboard her. The immediate questions I had have been answered – 46 feet isn’t too big, and the bed in the aft cabin is perfect. Buy! No, wait….she’s on the wrong side of the world, we haven’t sold Kukka yet, and did someone say something about money? Ah, details…mere details.

Time Out

A full moon cycle has passed since we've been back. This morning when I set out along the path which traces the shoreline around Iron Cove, I noticed our old friend above me, barely white against breakfast hour blue, and already on the wane. By the time I turned for home at the Haberfield canal, she'd dropped down into the western suburbs.
A son has announced his engagement. Another son has finished his undergraduate studies. Yet another son and a daughter flew out yesterday, he to meet a girl in Spain and she to Vietnam and beyond. Agnes writes from Sweden. "Why are people living so far north at all? It is SNOW   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! outside and COOOOOOOOOOOOOOld!" The world expands and contracts with the seasons, and time is slippery, very slippery.

Dave and his fiance Pauline

The tomatoes I planted out three weeks ago have doubled in height already, while the rest of our small garden - our lemon and lime trees, herbs, rambling roses and sundry rampant climbers - is making a rapid recovery from its winter of much neglect. Passionfruit and grapes are ripening on their respective vines, strawberries are growing in pots. The second vegetable bed is planted out solely in salad greens. Snail paradise.

I am leaving the garden in Alex's hands for 11 days while I am in New Zealand. I am going to stay with my mother in the country, play with my sister and my friends in the city, go to the beach house which hugs me tight and see a man about a boat. Ah, you say! Her name is Grace, and she's 46 feet long. It's that last bit which interests me most (it goes without saying that she's Swedish). What does a boat that big feel like when you are on board her? Just right, or overwhelming? Alex is happy to let me go ahead to find out. He's looking forward to recovering his solitude.