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Friday, 7 November 2003
In between trying to think of the ‘themes’ of my project (am not going to type my topic because then my boss might google it and discover [miaow] which would mean I would instantly detonate) *groan* I have been playing with the ’sketch’ Corel plugin and the photo I took this morning of the State Library.
Birds & Cats
Wednesday, 3 December 2003
And the cat home, looking a bit perkier than it used to.
(Just got my camera working on this computer - as if I don’t have enough distractions.)
Love is in the Air
Tuesday, 13 January 2004
Another engagement!
Congratulations to my lovely friends Jock and Stephanie on becoming engaged!!
I’ll buy you guys a drink when I get down to Melbourne!
Meanwhile, I continue to battle nature with my weapon of choice…the whippersnipper, fuelled on rooster-caused lack of sleep and rivers of perspiration.
Bits of Today
Thursday, 8 April 2004
The view from my desk:
M being stalked by the banana bird (formerly known as the Blue Faced Honeyeater):
The little capsicum that I grew, which ended up in last nights ill-fated salad meal.
Finished Them, The Bastards.
Saturday, 21 August 2004
Yesterday…
Saturday, 28 August 2004
Stumped
Wednesday, 15 September 2004
The Plague
Thursday, 30 September 2004
This is our female guests leg. It and she just returned from a harrowing visit to Fraser Island - where they were assaulted by sandflies. She has had something of an allergic reaction.
Quokka
Tuesday, 12 October 2004
Oh the pinnacle of cuteness. Quokka and baby.
The very well positioned Dome Cafe on Rottnest Island (where the Quokka pic was taken).
I Miss M
Wednesday, 13 October 2004
Good At Research
Wednesday, 13 October 2004
Somebody did it before I did. This is in Redfern. Impressive.
(If you voted Liberal I will hunt you down and KILL YOU…I don’t know where you live but I am very good @ research.)
Photo Friday - Pattern
Friday, 19 November 2004
Photo Friday - Silhouette
Friday, 7 January 2005
Noun: silhouette ’siloo’et
1) An outline of a solid object (as cast by its shadow)
2) A drawing of the outline of an object; filled in with some uniform color
More From the Green Tree Frog
Monday, 10 January 2005
First of all our friend the Green Tree Frog hopped through the dining room.
Then M, saviour and carer of all creatures frog, swooped down with carefully dampened hands and sat frog in a bowl of lovely water; where he stayed for the next few hours. He’s still there, despite M’s carefully constructed a frog faux-habitat that he just put within hopping range.
Update 11/01/05: M couldn’t help himself and moved Frog into his carefully constructed habitat and Frog has been asleep in there all day! We are going to try and catch some flies for him later.
Happy ‘Straya Day
Wednesday, 26 January 2005
Here are some pictures from today…
And from a few days ago, we have Frog - my photographic muse:
Motoring On Beelbi Creek
Friday, 18 February 2005
Today we tried out the new outboard motor. We need to run it in at low speeds, and take it in for a service after ten hours of use. It got a bit too hot in the boat - Oomoo needs a bimini.
Attack of the Alien Pumpkins
Friday, 25 February 2005
One of our friends from Rosebank (I have to say that, as they let us crash their NYE celebrations and then hang around their house for two more days) mentioned that he had cruised out the mall at Alstonville and stumbled on The Plaza Giant Pumpkin Competition. It seems that pumpkins grow more vicious as they get bigger - thus they had to be fenced in, to protect spectators from a seedy demise.
We have vision!!
Friday, 8 April 2005
Dylan and Rachael are our current houseguests and they have just improved my existence by about 150% and blown my tiny mind. They have donated me their MC3 camera (which shoots stills, plays mp3s, and makes movies), a USB 2.0 All In One Card Reader, and a 1gig card!@#$%^&! It’s not great in lowlight, but here I am, gleeful under the loungeroom light five minutes ago. Wacka wacka wahoo!
I have always wanted one of these - so once I sort out some extra webspace, look out! Have camera, will shoot!
Sketch by Dylan
Sunday, 10 April 2005
It Rains
Saturday, 23 April 2005
Our tank is full. Our little creek started flowing this morning.
This is both good and bad. If it hadn’t rained, the tank wouldn’t be full and I would not have been able to do three washing machine loads and six hand washes and rinses. However. If it hadn’t rained, my three bags of clothes that I left in the shed by mistake wouldn’t have got wet and been a whisker away from irretrievable mould - they wouldn’t have NEEDED washing. [sigh] More tomorrow on the Great Dress Disaster of 2005.
The Dress Disaster of 2005
Sunday, 24 April 2005
The other day when M began (began…) working on the Humber, I was trying to help, and retrieved trimming and radio housing from the boot. To do this, I removed the three bags of clothes that I store in there. I sewed the bags from an old op-shop doona cover, having learnt from sad experience that clothes stored in plastic, rot. Ten years worth of dresses and work clothes were safe in these bags. It can be legitimately stated that I have too many dresses. Most of them have not been worn more than twice. However, as I was sorting through them, I counted only three that had been bought new; the rest were secondhand. But still good! So why, why, why did I leave them on the ground in the shed near the boot? It rained like Noah for two days before M found the bags, gently steaming. I did seven lots of hand washing and three machine loads. Naturally, since I hung everything on the clothesline, it has barely stopped long enough between rainstorms for anything to dry. Frocking up in Melbourne is beginning not to be an option!
View From My Room: 01
Saturday, 30 April 2005
A day in pictures
Monday, 2 May 2005
As I went walking
Saturday, 7 May 2005
I saw a big black dog, leaning out the top storey window of a Carlton terrace house, just watching the world wander past - including me.
Breaking, Entering & Boating
Sunday, 8 May 2005
After a nice sleep in this morning, and twenty minutes of impromtu babysitting, I wandered out into the day, thanking god I didn’t drink more than two beers last night. (We began at the Hen’s Night, but crashed the Buck’s later on…). The sky was blue, the sky was sunny; and I headed to Williamstown via the train…
Got to my sister’s place. She hadn’t left the gate open as promised, so I had to acrobat myself (after almost getting my wrist stuck in between the palings, which really would have written off the rest of the day) and scale it. Why is this always happening to me? Once I’d gained entry, I prowled around, looking for my neglected bike, which I haven’t seen for almost two years. I found it in the back shed, it’s front wheel unattached and tyres down 
After fossicking (stop groaning MAP, it’s important, I need a cheap means of transportation), I found some WD40 (all kneel) and a pump. After channelling the part of my genetic make-up that has a bit of my dad’s bike mechanicness, my bicycle was back! Woo! I got so excited that I rode all the way to the Boat.
Sunday Stroll
Wednesday, 15 June 2005
On Sunday I went down to Hampton where I’m going to be living from the 6th of July - over the road from the beach. Such hardship 
We took E’s sister’s 10 month old chocolate labrador Harvey with us, and did a huge walk. It was perfect weather for winter walking. These are the first photos I have taken with my new phone.
Hoo-Ray! Pictures!
Monday, 18 July 2005
Here is my (dad’s) lemon tree
Monday, 25 July 2005
I knew I took this photo for a reason…
I picked a Canon A85
Friday, 29 July 2005
My days sans camera are at an end. After agonising as to whether I should order one from the US and get my mother to schlep it back, I decided that;
1) I couldn’t wait that long,
2) I don’t know how long ‘that long’ is,
and
3) I don’t know IF she would have brought it back…
So yesterday I went out and got the Canon Powershot A85. I was after the A95 - but it was $200 more than I paid with the only differences being one megapixel and no fold-out-and-pivot LCD screen - both of which I can [gulp] live without. On the plus side, it takes AA batteries, which I prefer, and compact flash cards - one of which I already own (thank you D & R).
So last night, when M and I went on a date to the Astor to see Coffee & Cigarettes and Maria Full of Grace, I took my first little movie. We were sitting underneath a speaker…
On Easey Street
Tuesday, 2 August 2005
Sunday Afternoon
Sunday, 11 September 2005
My Housemate - The Pimp
Friday, 16 September 2005
What 1970’s cop show did he escape from?
(I hope that as I’m typing this he has gone upstairs to shave off his creation. This is the kind of thing that can happen when you don’t have to work on a Friday.)
The Soft Furnishing Workroom
Friday, 16 September 2005
Soft Furnishings = Done!
Saturday, 17 September 2005
The trimaran now has all it’s cushions done, custom sewn by M over four days last week. A sterling effort. They love him down at the sewing machine shop, they even gave him a copy of their newsletter. He’s their new pet.
Pictures from Grand Final Day
Saturday, 24 September 2005
The Sea Adventure: The 1st Day
Friday, 30 September 2005
We stayed the night at the home of Hoo-Ray! in South Gippsland and woke bright and shiny to check out the weather forecast. M looked at it dubiously. He was silent during porridge. He was in ‘decision-mode’. The forecast was for about 15 to 20 knot winds, increasing to 25 knots later on. And thus a little bit iffy.
M had provisioned for the trip like Jamie Oliver. He’d taken care of it all, and didn’t want to venture out in weather that would make his newly minted First Mate swim for home. I think he’d had nightmares about me stepping aboard and instantaneously vomiting straight over the side. Gunwale. Whatever.
So it was crunch time. If we were going to launch, we needed to get to the ramp at Newhaven by about 8.30am to get underway. If we left it any later we would be battling the tide, which would be concentrating on sucking us out into the unfriendly waters of Bass Strait.
“Right B,” said M, “I don’t think we’ll go. It will be too rough. We’ll just have to bash our way through. It’d be wet, and in no way a relaxing sail.”
I looked moodily at my porridge. My father wisely stayed silent.
“I don’t care if we have to bash our way. I want to go today. I’m not a princess. I can handle waves.”
M shook his head and cautioned me again.
“B, it won’t be much fun. We can just hang around today and go tomorrow instead.”
I shook my head. No.
And so it was that we turned up, after a forty minute drive, at the Newhaven boat ramp, which is right next to the Newhaven Yacht Squadron, and it’s very sexy yacht basin. I then assumed that we could back Hoo-Ray! down the ramp, into the water, and set off. But no. It was all going on with the rigging and the getting the mast up and the shackling of forestays and finding the jib. It seemed to me to take an interminable time. And the shackles. Who would have invented such a thing? What could be worse than with ice cold hands on rolling waves, trying to put a shackle on a stay or take one off?
A shackle is a bit of metal shaped like a ‘U’ with a pin that screws across, kind of like a screw on earring. Here’s what one looks like. Beyond fiddly. I can barely admit it, but even while M and I were rigging Hoo-Ray!, the boat was bouncing around on the trailer suspension and made me feel a little bit ill. However, I did not tell a soul.
Anyway, finally we got Hoo-Ray! sorted out. She slipped off the trailer (after some vein-popping pushing) and into the water. We tethered her to the jetty and dad and M went to speak to the people at the shop where we were going to leave the van and trailer locked up for the next three days. I was Master of the Boat. I tried sticking my head down below where we were to sleep. Instant quease. I tried a few more times, with the same result. I settled this by staying in the cockpit with my eyes fixed firmly on land.
Once they returned, M then had to spend what seemed an age setting up the mainsail and more rigging stuff. My dad stood on the jetty, holding the boat steady with the patience of a cow. Finally we were ready to actually leave. Go. Sail away. Vamoose! We sailed away from the jetty, waving to my dad, and M took the reef out of the sail, as we didn’t seem to be moving very fast. That only lasted for about ten minutes. Then the wind decided to visit. Big time.
Very soon there seemed to be an increasing number of Large Waves, and the wind was getting towards about 30 knots*. M felt that he may have removed the reef in the sail somewhat prematurely. So, as I took the tiller, he wrestled with the mainsail. As I hadn’t yet learnt the art of navigating the boat gently over waves, Hoo-Ray! and M both took a bit of a bashing. We furled the jib (all hail the invention of the furler) and were generally basted in brine. The direction in which we needed to head was directly into the wind… er… malestrom. The waves were very close together and about six feet high. Think of very big, liquid green corrugated tin.
Our aim was to go Rhyll for lunch and then to continue on our adventure by sailing across to French Island, and tucking under Tortoise Head for the night in the deep water that ran along the beach. However, the weather thought otherwise. After about forty minutes of seafaring battle, we fired up the outboard and began motor sailing. About four or five times M had to go to the front of the boat to tie something down or fix something that had snapped. I steered mutinously onward. Drenched and desperate to wee.
Rhyll materialised like some kind of wondrous figment. We aimed for the jetty at which M and my dad had tied up a month before. Bits of it were there, but the rest of it had sunk. It was quite perplexing. Then we aimed Hoo-Ray! at a far more rewarding structure. The public toilets. We pulled up on to the beach (after raising the rudder, the motor and the centreboard) and M and I jumped ashore.
“We did it!” M danced at me. “We made it to Rhyll!”
“I’m so glad!” I shouted into the widening gap between us. “I can’t talk anymore, I’m concentrating on bladder control.”
I loped in bladder controlling leaps to the public toilets and weed like the world’s most thirsty camel. It was heaven.
By the time I made it back to M, I was capable of conversation. M, in an indication of what life was going to be like for the next few days, made a sandwichy sensation of buttered bread, pesto, cheese and cherry tomatos. And a cup of Earl Grey tea. We licked our wounds and felt vastly improved.
I decided to stay with Hoo-Ray! while M went to have a look around. We were anchored so near the beach, that the boat was relatively steady. I curled up underneath in my sleeping bag and read a bit, snoozed a bit, and read a bit more until M came back and began ‘doing things’ on deck. Whatever he was doing seemed to involve a lot of walking about, and each time he moved, the boat bobbed in response. As did my stomach. The quease returned.
As it was a Friday, M reported that most of Rhyll’s five or six shops were open, and that he had found a lovely place for a drink… and maybe dinner. The thought of dinner did not excite me, but I had vague feeling that a stubby of Stella Artois might banish my sickness. We secured the valiant Hoo-Ray! and took a walk up the hill. The more I saw of Rhyll the prettier it seemed to get! We decided to be extravagant and eat at the fancy place. My thoughts about the Stella were correct. They had a lovely woodfire. The owner came and chatted to us and we told him we’d just sailed in, feeling slightly smug.
The menu was absolutely amazing, the prices were ridiculous and the food didn’t measure up to either. But it was nice to be out after our battle with the sea. We left at about 8pm to go back to Hoo-Ray! where we put on our slippers and settled in. After we’d lain there for about three hours, M groaned.
“I can’t take it anymore. I haven’t been able to get to sleep. That bit of the broken jetty keeps hitting the pole and keeping me awake.”
And so, if you had been there, you would have seen us at about midnight, motoring with great trepidation, to the other side of the little harbour. I stood on the bow with our Dolphin torch lighting our path and praying, while M steered valiantly through the night air. We found a spot. Checked that the anchor wasn’t dragging. And snuggled down again, this time for the rest of the night.
*What is a knot? A knot is the seagoing equivalent of a kilometre. It’s how you measure wind and distance on the water. However - one knot is equal to 1.8 kilometres. The odd thing is that as the wind blows stronger the power of the wind gets ridicuously stronger. Quite simply, you square the wind speed to get the power of the wind. Which is why 30 knots blows off your socks and twenty’s nearly plenty.
The Sea Adventure: The 2nd Day
Saturday, 1 October 2005
After our midnight adventures it was exciting to wake up in a part of the harbour that we hadn’t seen before (because we arrived in the dark). It was gorgeous. The houses of Rhyll surrounded the little sheltered bay, and there were big green hills a little further around, away from the township. M made cups of tea and his breakfast wonder dish ‘Egg in a Hole’. If you have not experienced Egg in a Hole, you should. It’s particularly good when camping.
How to make ‘Egg in a Hole’
Get a bit of bread. Bite a hole in the middle of it. Eat the bit you bit. Put bread in frypan with some butter, garlic (if you’re that way inclined), and some salt and pepper. Put ‘egg in hole’. Fry both sides. Stick it on a plate. Eat it.
——————–
With breakfast done and dusted, I washed up in the bucket. (Not the one reserved for wee.) M chatted to a few passers by on the shore, and then we set off for French Island. I hadn’t realised quite how protected we had been in Rhyll. As soon as we got a fair way from land we where again hit by the Mega Wind. I’d texted my dad to ask him to text me through the latest forecast for Westernport Bay. Naturally 15 to 20 knot forecast we had read online just the day before had disappeared into the ether, only to be replaced by 25 to 30 knot winds - strong wind warning. Perfect. Not.
Again we reefed the mainsail (i.e. didn’t have the entire sail up, just most of it) and after a while decided to again rely on the motor as our destination was exactly where the wind was coming from. We had to tack to get there, which was going to take us a ridiculously long time in such strong winds. Of course M had to do battle with bits and pieces again. Throughout our trip there were only two things he did that drove me crazy. One was telling me to steer for ‘that tree over there’.
“Which tree?”
He would point, as the boat flailed from wave to wave, at what looked to me like a whole plantation of trees in the distance.
“That one!”
“Um. Ok.”
Whereupon I would just try and continue in the direction that we were already going, but would inevitably, in my efforts to ease us through the waves, fall off course until the boat, going sideways into the tumult, would encounter several large waves. The waves would fall on M, who would continue with whatever thing he was trying to fix while managing to point me back in the direction of his ‘tree’.
The other thing that disturbed me (although it shouldn’t, as he replicates his actions on dry land with doors) was his inability to remember to close the hatch. The hatch! The only thing keeping all our food and sleeping bags dry. As I do on solid ground, I would just close it myself every ten minutes or so, but because I kept losing track of the tree, it became imperative to keep the hatch shut. At one point I looked up, saw it open again, closed it, and one second later it was submerged under a big dumping of green water. M and I looked at each other with Tweety-Bird eyes.
It was a tewwible stworm. The bowt wocked and wocked…
The wind was going nuts, although the waves weren’t quite as big as the previous day.
“Don’t worry,” M kept shouting reassuringly, “Once we get close to French Island, it will be all sheltered. It will be much calmer!”
I, salt chafed, squinted toward the shore. It really didn’t look any calmer there. We motor sailed onwards, M and I both singing that Rolf Harris song in tune with the engine…
Sun-a-rise, he come in the morning
Sun-a-rise, he come with the dawning
Spreading all the light all around…
(…at that point we would do didgeridoo noises, which complemented the tone of the motor quite well.)
It took us what seemed like a couple of hours to reach French Island. The wind completely disregarded our wishes and blew even harder. Thankfully the waves got smaller as we got close to land. We nosed our way along the beach. Anchored. Too windy. Pulled up anchor. Moved along a bit. Anchored. Too near the remnants of an old jetty. Pulled up anchor. Moved right into the beach. And anchored again. We had found a ‘good spot’. Windy but ‘offshore’ so no waves at all.
“Once the tide goes out, we’ll be up on the sand you know,” said M, ever knowledgable about the whens and wheres of the tide.
“Will the boat flop on to it’s side?”
“Probably not.”
“Then it doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, as long as the tide is high when we want to get going.”
And with those words I tempted fate. But more on that later. M went for an exploratory wander and I stretched out on the boat in the sun, while trying to stay out of the wind. It got quite hot. We drank a cheerful glass of red wine each (yes - from a glass - we are so styley) and decided to go on a Walk.
I wanted to go and coo at the lambs that were sharing a paddock with older sheep and some cows. Of course once I got too near the fence, they all scattered. I was, again, happy that I gave up eating them. Less guilt. Our walk continued. I was looking for treasure. I found two tennis balls - only needed one more for M to be able to juggle. It was only five minutes until I found the necessary third ball, and M obliged me be juggling jubilantly. We found two more tennis balls after that.
The shores of French Island (or the part that we were on) were odd. It seemed as if there might have been a forest right down to the water, because the sand was full of little dead tree trunks. And areas of the sand that looked like rock, were actually some kind of rock-looking squishy bouncy stuff. It was strange. Maybe chicory comes from trees…
[Minor tangent: I just googled and it appears that ‘The island’s mangroves were burned in the 1840s for reduction to barilla, a plant ash rich in soda and potassium which was used in the production of glass and soap. However, heavy rains washed away most of the ash and the endeavour was abandoned.‘ ]
OK. Glad I sorted that out. Here are some pictures from our walk.
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It was quite hot, although still fairly windy, but by the time we made it back to the boat everything had slackened off. I went back to my book, while M went on a solitary jaunt toward Tortoise Head. But not before some tea.
It began to get dark. And this is where I come back to my marvellous idea of mooring the boat high and dry. Because as the dusk set in, so did the MOSQUITOS. Not normal small urban mosquitos, but large, swamplike creatures that had been waiting ten years for flesh. Not hordes, just a small, SAS-like battalion. They were ruthless and determined. I dressed myself so that the only things touching the air were my hands and face. I ran up and down the boat in a kind of perpetual motion. We had no insect repellant. I cursed the lack of Bushman. I stood looking down at a nearby little rock, willing the tide to give me some indication it was coming in. Never had a tide taken so long.
All I had with me that I thought mosquitos woundn’t like was some lavender oil. So I lit our little candle lantern, dabbed oil on the top and huddled over the fumes. I became miraculously mosquito free! We then basted M and the boat in lavender oil, so much so that if anyone had stumbled upon us, we would have been mistaken for feral aromatherapists. And still we waited. It was like watching a kettle boil. M tried to haul us out using the anchor, but the boat would not budge. So we both went for a dusky walk toward Tortoise Head. Keeping a nervous glance up our sleeve for the nearly floating boat.
OK, by now it’s dark. M had taken a compass bearing on the far side of the deepwater channel that began about five metres out. We aimed, when we finally floated free, to anchor in the channel so that we wouldn’t wake up high and dry all over again. FINALLY the tide came in enough for Hoo-Ray! to float. We each grabbed a plastic oar and paddled. Paddled hard. M kept and eye on the GPS and after 100 meters dropped the anchor over the side. The anchor rope played out a long way, which seemed to indicate that we’d been successful.
Further away from the beach it was a trifle more breezy and the mosquitos dissapated quickly. Such relief. M cooked up some pasta and added in the pesto he had made before we set out. With the addition of cherry tomatos, it was the most divine dinner of our sailing adventure, and blew the restaurant meal of the night before out of the water. We drank some red, ate some tim-tams and went to bed, hoping we would still be afloat in the morning.
We were…
Return & Recovery
Tuesday, 4 October 2005
Returned yesterday afternoon. I was instantly struck by sore throat bug. Today that morphed into… well, I am reluctant to say flu, but let’s just say a ‘fluey thing’. Gah. Shivery, headachey, nauseousy. Horror. Am trying to update [miaow] with the exciting story of our Grand Seafaring Adventure, but it’s going to take me a little while. It will appear further down the page from this entry - you have been warned. Now I will go and expire a bit more.
Here’s where I was a few nights ago.
In the garden by the broccoli
Monday, 17 October 2005
Now I am off to move the boat trailer on my own so I can get Small Brother’s car out. I would have asked M to help me this morning, but he had hit his head on the van and couldn’t find the stove lighter - so it was best just to pet him gently and let him go. Wish me luck!
Cat me out of here!
Saturday, 22 October 2005
Sunday Driving
Sunday, 20 November 2005
We Love This Cartoon
Tuesday, 22 November 2005
From an article in the Age entitled Labor Surges While IR Fury Bites…
It’s Up! - A Christmas Tree Meme
Monday, 5 December 2005
D and E brought home a tree last night. Much rejoicing! We don’t have much in the way of pretty lights or decorations yet, but we’re working on it. Oh god. I just had a flashback to making paper chains and popcorn strings. What else lurks forgotten in my brain? The lyrics of Madonna’s 1980s back catalogue? Eeeek!
Stick a picture of your tree online and post the link in the comments. This might be the start of a Christmas Tree Meme! (…or not, as the case may be.) Of course, we’re probably pretty early. But as none of us have had a proper sized tree since moving out of home, we don’t care. Deck the malls with plastic holly!
Meredith 2005 - Pictures
Monday, 12 December 2005
An Absence of Pictures
Saturday, 24 December 2005
There is a rather large gaping hole where pictures of M’s pride and joy should be. Unfortunately the camera got left on the boat, and, as the only way to get to and from the boat at the moment is on a very tippy surfski and someone (M) keeps forgetting the waterproof bag - the camera remains on the boat.
Last night we attempted to have our first boat picnic with E and DJ, who were very keen to get aboard. Welcome to weather dependency. E made a gorgeous picnic. M paddled out. E and DJ drove to pick me up from Newport train station. Suddenly, we were in Kansas. The weather went psycho. DJ actually works at the BoM and had told us on good authority that this was not supposed to happen until about 11pm at night.
It was impossible to get out to Boat, and thus we picnicked in the park instead, which was almost as good. We toasted Boat and Christmas with champagne and lay on the grass. The boat visit was postponed for another, more amenable day. We spent an anxious night listening to wind howl and thunder boom, wondering whether Boat was tethered properly or was chafing through the mooring rope and poised for flight…
Boxing Day
Monday, 26 December 2005
After a large lunch at my mum’s place, M and I scooted down to Williamstown in the van, and met up with Chris. We went for a jaunt down the Yarra River - which is not something we’ll be able to do (for a while, anyway) once we’ve got the mast on.
Sailing Holiday - Day 03 - by M
Friday, 6 January 2006
Big chilly swims in morning. E goes in nude and can’t get back onboard. Much hilarity. A clifftop Portsea person raises the Australian flag. E and B serenade them with the national anthem in cat voices. Fully reef sails as forecast is for 25 knots and am not sure how things will be with 4 onboard. Turns out that E and Dave are naturals and are a hoot to have onboard.
Go out to smell the seals again. Then up along coast the Heads. Across to Queenscliff and back to our own little trimaran shaped nook. About 20nm in total. This time its low tide so we set about getting all the rocks out of the way so we can sit on the sand next to the park. Long walks in town and all meet at pub. As you do.
Sailing Holiday - Day 04 - by M
Saturday, 7 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
A south easterly breeze at 20knots. Lazy lovely sail around spy island (the ASIS base) then along beaches and coast downwind to Port Arlington. Ran aground… as i like to noodle right next to the shore (and I wasn’t paying attention). Rudder a bit sad. Nevermind. Get to Port Arlington and the promise of fresh mussels. Drop anchor off the beach.
It’s a good spot. Wind offshore. Snorkle and jump off the pier for a while.
Big walk around town and up hill. Drinks at a cool bar. Buy 3 kilo of mussles off a boat and cook em up with some white wine. The ‘slurp for the cook, slurp for the pot’, recipe. Good sleep.
Sailing Holiday - Day 05 - by M
Sunday, 8 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
More south easterly winds at 20 knots. Tacked all the way back to Portsea. Back at Portsea pub and we blow a bomb on a yuck seafood thing. An extravaganza of batter, good scallops and dodgy prawns. The brown feast. The guys leave mid arvo. B and I decided to go to Westernport the next day. We stay the night at anchor in Portsea (near the exit to Bass Strait) even though we know there is an onshore blow going to hit that night. What a yuck night. Some sort of NASA sensory training hell. Got both anchors down and hung on. B went green, but managed to cook a curry without indulging in any hurling. A night of little sleep. It’s hard to wee when you can’t get your balance.
Sailing Holiday - Day 06 - by M
Monday, 9 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Our first north easterly. 10 to 15 knots. Left for the heads at 7am. Aiming for high tide on the rip bank. Still 2 hours of flood. Swirls and eddies were huge and scary. A big SW swell was running. Also a SE swell. However the combination of the high tide and flood stream make it tame.
We did around 6 knots all the way to Westernport. Wind left us for an hour and we motored. B slept. Boom of swell crashing onto beaches and headlands. Went close to Cape Shanck. Past Bushranger’s Bay. Wild being out there. Felt like we could tackle anything. I keep looking across the blue swells, out to sea and an endless horizon. Dolphins hung around and swam with us.
Wind drops out at entrance to Westernport motor up to Cowes. Drop anchor on the beach. Do washing. Meet Ray! (Father of B, loitering on the beach with camera. Highly suspicious.) Hot. Sail off to Rhyll. Nice sail. Anchor in front of the overpriced pub. Ignore pub and hit the fish and chip shop next door. Flathead tails and chips for dinner. Great sleep.
Sailing Holiday - Day 07 - by M
Tuesday, 10 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Breakfast aboard. Meet Ray at Newhaven at 1.30pm. Low tide. Sailed off to Tortoise Head. A fast hoot of a sail. Boat whizzes along. B stays below, sleeping and reading Chandler.
Anchor up close to shore. Close-ish. Ray and I stroll up the headland. Wild beach wild views. We were going to stay the night but decide to tack our way back to the conservation park between Ryhll and Cowes. Sail off toward Sandy Cape then into a beautiful quiet lagoon near Rhyll. Rains all night. Curry. Snug. Fun with Ray hanging around. Wine and beer.
Sailing Holiday - Day 08 - by M
Wednesday, 11 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Back to Rhyll. But not before an exploration of the lagoon, which turns out to be horseshoe shaped.
Ray shouts us organic scrambled eggs for breakfast! [Awesome chai latte - Ed.]Sail up Settlement Point at the eastern side of French Isalnd. Surprised at how lovely and wild the area looks. Will have to come back. A fast sail to Newhaven. Ray steers a lot of the way. He is a good sailor and seems to enjoy getting amongst the rough stuff. A couple of days of really fast sailing. Drop him off at Newhaven at 330pm dead low tide. Hit pier… wah. More repairs for when we get home. Sail back to Rhyll. Go for long walk. Visit the general store. We have flathead tails and potato cakes again. Yum! Have to wait for tide around at front beach. Then scoot to the side beach in front of the pub. We tie up in such a way as to be able to pull ourselves up to the sand. Very nice. Good sleep.
Sailing Holiday - Day 09 - by M
Thursday, 12 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
A long walk up the hill at Rhyll and across in front of the lagoon. Unusual nature trail. We vow to return. Back via general store and coffee in café. Goodbye Rhyll. Set out toward Cowes. Quiet easy sailing. Lovely day. Didn’t know where to stop at Cowes as we wanted to explore and try to get some navigation light bulbs. Ended up anchoring off the sailing club beach south of the town. An F 28 was in the club grounds. Outer Limits. Wah. We walked around town. Went to op shops and had a coffee. Went to hardware shops for the bulbs. No luck. Bought new sunglasses and op-shop shorts. B got a good deal on a bikini.
Back to boat mid arvo. It’s stuck. We push and push. No one helps. I winch us along the anchor line, which loosens us a bit. After about 25 minutes, we float free. We decide to scoot over to Flinders to save ourselves travelling time to the heads in the morning. Hopefully it has shelter for a south wind. I punt that it does. We set off up the channel. It is open to Bass Strait and the wind kicks in. Tide is against the wind and soon waves get to around 2mtrs – stacked close and messy. I power up the boat and she slices and flys thru but it is a wild ride. Poor B gets a tad pale. I head off track and beat up toward the straight inside Cat Bay. I have surfed Flynns Reef inside the bay a few times. So I knew it. It is way calmer. One last rough ride across the entrance to Westernport and we arrive. Flinders is calm and totally beautiful.
We anchor off the beach and step ashore in 12inches of water. A big wander through town and coffee. B still green. Back at the boat at sunset we cooked up a tuna tomato thingo. I set up all the pilotage needed for a boisterous return to Port Phillip Bay. A night start. Sectores to turn by. Dawn by Cape Shanck. Etc. I put a a bunch of waypoints in the GPS as back up. I won’t rely on a GPS ever. But if it’s not broken and hasn’t been dropped overboard then it is good to double check my pilotage.
Sailing Holiday - Day 11 - by M
Saturday, 14 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Boat a shambles. Go off to breaky, coffee, op shops and an art show… as you do. Got back just as Chris and Jodie get into town. A wild clean of the boat and here they are.
A trip into town via car to get mossie coils and some beer/ice. Then out through the mythical cut and into a sunny 15knot south wind. Hello Popes Eye, hello albatross colony and hello seal colony. Phew. Jodie goes into shut down as she doesn’t get the boat thing at all.
I tack us across to Portsea and we step off onto the beach and scurry up to pub to have medicine. Beer and chips. Jodie comes to life. A nice and cruisey sail up the heads along the national park where we see some lazy dolphins, and then downwind back to Queenscliff. Jodie chatting and having a hoot untill she trips into the cabin and bangs her poor head. Ouch.
Back in our nook and she retreats to the car to chill. I hand her a wine an hour later and the party begins. B and I had run out of cruising funds and out of cooking gas so we tweak all our guest’s nibblies and conjur a surpring array of tasty bits. Add beer and awesome wine and we call it a dinner. We chat and laught for a few hours then bed.
Sailing Holiday - Day 12 - by M
Sunday, 15 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Had to say see ya to the girls as we had a 30th birthday to get to mid arvo in Melbourne. A 5 hour downwind sail. B reads books. I dream. The waves got bigger close to the city and the tri went into surfing mode. B hooted. Wind got up to 15/20knots and we decided to reach across for a while even tho it would make us late. The boat flew along a 12 knots steady. The pop top was up and spray was getting in but we couldn’t stop. It is addictive to go fast! End of trip mid arvo. Boat on mooring and us bundled into a car by B’s parents and the Grassy Noel.
We survive. Boat performs as I had hoped. Top speeds are a hoot to sit near. Nothing breaks. We didn’t throw up… what more could you want?
First day of school - ever!
Wednesday, 1 February 2006
This is our lovely friend Claudia all frocked up for her first day at primary school. Suddenly she looks so much older, even though she’s still only five. Am loving those pigtails.
It doesn’t seem so long ago that she was almost one whole year younger and had just caught a fish that was almost as big as her own head. She named it ‘HeadChoppedOffEaten’ and M fried it up for her delectation.
Congratulations Small C! Keep dancing to the Ramones - although rock, rock, rock, rock, rock’n'roll PRIMARY school doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, I’m sure you can make it happen.
The lease is signed…eeek!
Tuesday, 30 May 2006
The towbar of adventure…
There are a few more pictures of the Pit Pony and the Ostrich over on Flickr…
Posers!
Thursday, 22 June 2006
And before breakfast I…
Friday, 30 June 2006
Decided to do a different kind of work out. We collected a trailerload of firewood a few days ago, and M chainsawed it into fire-sized bits. I decided to stack it…
…and it was pretty much as good as having a personal trainer!
Soggy Sunday
Sunday, 9 July 2006
Another dreary weather day. We all noodled around and then went to Point Leo beach via the Bittern market (which has too much new stuff and not enough junk IMHO).
Sunday Rainstorming
Monday, 24 July 2006
Cold mornings and sunset nights…
Tuesday, 8 August 2006
It was so cold this morning that I was awed. Awed until it thawed! Icy.
The evening cranked out a sunset that made up for the chill…
Saturday. No shed work today.
Saturday, 12 August 2006
The weather was intermittently gorgeous. We returned a car and a trailer to Loch, making the trailer (the one that we live in) surrounds look a bit less like a secondhand dealership. I removed my lcd screen from dad’s computer and replaced it with his antiquated 14″ CRT [groan]. That computer knows me. It senses when I am near. As soon as I swapped monitors it ceased to recognise it’s hard drive. I breathed in deeply through my nose, counting slowly in many dialects.
Had lunch. And fortified by red wine, I took the case off for the bazillionth time, poked everything hard, and voila! It deigned to boot up. How kind. I’m never touching it again. Our relationship is one of mutual loathing. Pinched some firewood, and debated on borrowing my sister’s car, having just returned Small Brother’s hot rod. Why? Because the Humber needs some tweaking. M and I decided to ponder over the manual and see if we could put it to rights.
We noodled home in the late afternoon sun, kept driving past our driveway and continued down to Warneet…
I, strangely, forgot how pretty things can be at the end of the road that we live on.
A Yak with a view
Sunday, 3 September 2006
We encountered this woolly thing on today’s Sunday drive. We took in Corinella [bleugh], Tenby Point [interesting], San Remo [good for pulling in on the boat] and Rhyll [love it]. It was the first time we’d visited Rhyll by car instead of sail.
A weekend of birthdays
Monday, 18 September 2006
It feels like we haven’t stopped since the day we flew to Queensland about ten days ago. We left the house on Saturday morning to go to our friend Jack’s fifth birthday.
The day began with what seem like masses of four and five year olds refusing to partipate in musical chairs,
“It’s like herding cats,” sighed father of Jack.
The day ended after a grand BBQ dinner with a screening of Napolean Dynamite, which was largely hysterical. We followed it up with the Comic Relief episode of Little Britain, and went to sleep feeling full. Oh the sleeping! The wonders of a foam mattress that boasts some actual density! I spent at least ten minutes lying awake wondering why I couldn’t feel my hip driving into the floor the way it does when we sleep on our mattress in the van. Three words. Dense. Foam. Rubber. Three more words. Buy. One. NOW.
After a lovely sleep, we headed off to midday strawberry daquiris at Al’s 18th birthday party - where people bashed pinyada’s, and in the 15 hours that the party went for, blew the stereo speakers and drained a keg. There was mad dancing and one requisite spectacular spew. Bed at 3am and awake at 9am to help eat the fablous breakfast that was concocted as if by magic.
We limped home to trailer oasis in the mid afternoon. M had a lot more energy than me and went off to shedland to do some boat building. I languished on the couch with a book. I can hardly bear to think about going to work in the morning. Ack.
Buy me a ring
Wednesday, 27 September 2006
Today’s score from the op-shop was this ring that actually fits on my most fattest finger in the world. I don’t think it was always so fat, but years of netball around the age of 12 took care of that for me. After having a lovely catch up lunch with E today, we hit the op-shop, which is where I left her, happily sifting through odds and sods.
Lang Lang Op Shop. Watch out!
Saturday, 14 October 2006
This is a sign from the Lang Lang Op-Shop (photo is dodgy because my phone is dodgy - hurry up and send me new phone Small Brother!). It reads:
Tampering and removing goods left at front door for Op Shop use is Un Australian and Not in the Spirit of the community. Grrrr! Forget about flag burning, op-shop pilfering is the new ‘children overboard’. Have I just given Johnny another election angle?