"We can't use bare feet."

Third son came home from school yesterday, hysterical. 
     Between sobs and sniffles, he managed to tell me he didn't want to run in his school's cross-country and he wanted to stay home that day.
     Something was amiss.  Third Son loves running. He is my only child who will come walking with me when I go for long walks and half the time he runs.  So I asked the obvious question.
     "Mum, we gotta wear shoes.  We can't use bare feet. I can't run in shoes.  Them white kids, they can, they used to it.  But us black kids, we can't run in shoes."
     He pleaded with me to let him stay home. I struggled to keep a straight face (and ignore his grammar).
     "We'll work something out," I said, giving his tear-stained cheek a big kiss while wondering if the guidelines for competing in Olympic track events might apply to the annual cross-country run in a small primary school on a remote, tropical island.  
     After all, Zola Budd ran 'using' bare feet.

Mothers' Day

I simply love it when my kids draw me pictures and make me a cards.  I think of the time and effort they put into cutting out and sticking on shapes, drawing little hearts for the borders and painstakingly penciling in the block and bubble writing (a recent favourite of my youngest two).  
     I was chuffed to receive this card from my daughter ... 

     ... until I realised I had taken my eyes off two balls, both of which were equally confronting; my daughter's appalling grammar and the fact I've developed Tuckshop Lady Arms.  First Son was delighted to advise they are also known as Elephant Ears!

     I felt better when I read Third Son's card.  No more gruesome realities. 

By the way, I only ever smack Third Son and not nearly as often as I should.

Her beauty and her terror!

When the dogs and I don’t feel like a long walk, we amble five minutes up to the Green Hill fortress.  I think of it as the top of TI with panoramic views of a seascape that has captivated me for almost 20 years.  Every time I mount the rise of Green Hill and gaze over the expansive ocean, Dorothea Mackellar’s words spring to mind.

I love her far horizon

I love her jewel sea

Her beauty and her terror

     And I have to stop.  There’s no wide brown land for me!

     I am oh, so familiar with the beauty and terror of this sea, especially the way it can snap from beautiful to terrifying. 

     It was beautiful the day Tony and I sailed from TI in our seven metre, six-eighths steel, 46 hp Perkins fishing vessel, Parledee.  There was the faintest breeze and a few cottonwool clouds, the kind young kids draw, on the horizon.  The water was glittering in the morning sun exactly like a great, liquid sapphire.  The islands, Wednesday, Tuesday, Double and Naghir, were a shimmering, dreamy green. 

     We were headed to Stephen Island where there were big mackerel to be caught.  Tony and I toasted our good fortune with cups of instant coffee. The day before, I was rinsing the grounds from the Bodum and it slipped from its steel frame into the TI harbour.  Had I been superstitious, I’d have considered this an omen.  But Tony and I, and our dreams, had been lulled into a false sense of good fortune by the auto-pilot and the gentle, pulsing rumble of the Perkins. Ain’t love and wise investment sweet?

     The next day, we were riding an angry ocean, a bucking bronco of a thousand different greys.  All we could do was hold on.  The auto-pilot was stuffed and the engine had been playing up (always the bloody impeller!).  I curled up in the focsle, bit my nails and prepared to die. I didn’t care what Tony did behind the wheel.  And I didn’t care that we’d made a really bad investment with a fishing boat that was far too small for the unpredictable and violent sea of the Torres Strait.  BECAUSE WE WERE GOING TO DIE!

And the next day, things calmed down and I nursed a couple of bruised finger stumps as we found anchorage on Darnley Island.   

     A week later, a low formed in the Coral Sea or Gulf, always one or the other, and the Torres Strait was besieged by raging winds and mountainous seas.  Our life became a ritual of checking anchor, drifting, finding new anchorage (or motoring into a squall till it passed) and then finding a part no longer worked or was burnt out.  And so on and so on.

     On the good, calm days, either something broke down or the current presented problems – it could stop our boat in its watery tracks.  I remember moving anchorage from the village at Darnley to a spot further east, a fifteen minute steam.  After half an hour at top speed, it appeared we hadn’t moved at all.  We took bearings and continued.  We weren’t making any progress.  The current was moving against us at the same speed we were travelling. 

     We met up with other boat owners and compared stories.  It turns out, our experiences with faulty engines, dodgy freezers and the elusive safe anchorage, were normal. 

     I started to hate the ocean, with passion.  She was a nasty, vengeful maiden, never at peace.  If she wasn’t raging, she’d be the reason something would stop working, so I thought.

     We spent a lot of time on anchor (when it held) and I started to think about my predicament.  I realised a life at sea - calm-one-minute and mad-angry-psycho the next, and the omnipresent need to repair something that was broken or have a part air-freighted up at top dollar - was not for me.  

     Tony and I settled back under his parents’ house and eventually sold Pareledee in favour of a trailer boat (no anchorage worries, thank you very much).

I continue to be captivated by the sea, but I much prefer experiencing her beauty and her terror from the solid, safety of Green Hill fortress.

The Boy Who Loved Fish

                                                                                                        By Detta

"This fish keeps tickling me," said the boy who loved fish.

"Well, my friend," said the boy, "if you want to come home with me, I'll have to ask my mum and dad." 

"Stay hidden under the water while I ask them."

"Yippee!  They said you could come as long as you bring a little friend for my sister."

"Perfect."

 Homeward bound.

A tiny invertebrate, a big thank you

Special people have been immortalised in many ways. 

    Anna Pavlova and Dame Nellie Melba became namesakes for desserts.  Abel Tasman did quite well.  He had a state, a tiger, a devil and a sea named after him.  Captain James Cook didn’t do as well.  In far north Queensland, he has a highway, a town and a shire and probably a few streets, also. 

    The Greek demigod, Archille had a tendon named after him and his heel is a metaphor for a person’s weak spot. Friedrich's, Huntington's and Hansen's have become names of diseases.

    As an important personality, even an infamous murderer, you might be cast in wax.  If you are a famous actor you could have your name written on a flash, shiny tile on a footpath in Hollywood.  Mel Gibson has one of those tiles AND he has a cocktail named after him – The Bi-Polar.  The mention of Hugh Grant still provokes thoughts in many of stolen moments of ecstasy in vehicles. 

    It’s probably a good time to mention that Tony named our brand-new, 2001 Toyota Camry sedan taxi after me, Lady Cathrine. 

    None of these compare with my darling husband’s immortalisation in the world of marine science as Nuuanu titaseyi, a new species of small crustacean discovered in the Torres Strait.

    ‘Nuuanu’ is the genus, named after the area in Hawaii where the animal was first recognised.  And the ‘i’ after Titasey is Latin and indicates that the species is named after a male.

    I tried to read a scientific journal about the amphipod and all I could make out were the authors’ names and N. titaseyi which I think must be the proper way to write it. 

N. titaseyi is very small, 3.25 mm and bears a striking resemblance to a head louse.

This isn't the dinky di N. titaseyi, but it's very close, a sort of twin.

    Here is how T. Titasey became N. titaseyi.

    In October, 2006, Tony and the Madam Dugong were chartered for a week by three scientists from the Australian Museum, Jim, Maria and Lauren.  They were looking for a small crustacean that was likely to be found in areas of seaweed and coral.  Tony had to get them to those areas.  He had an idea where to go having dived many times around TI for another sort of crustacean, crayfish.

    It wasn’t often that Tony had a solid week’s charter in the Madam Dugong so he was very happy to be out on the water, day after day, moving around to get Jim, Maria and Lauren on the right dive spots.  Very little of what they spoke about in scienctific jargon  made sense as they sifted through samples, even when they said they had found something. But they were happy so Tony was happy.

    Jim, Maria and Lauren left and Tony got on with the job of running a fishing charter.

Imagine our surprise when Lauren emailed last week, six and a half years later, to advise they did, in fact, find a new species and they named it after Tony to say thank you for helping them find the critters.

    What a thank you gift!

    Tony glowed with pride when I showed him the email and image.

    ‘I’m going to get a tattoo of that,’ he said with a big grin.

    Tony has a few tatts, including some homemade jobs, one of which is the first part of his name, T.I.T, on his arm in a very prominent place.  He abandoned the last four letters due to the intense pain.  I have spent the better part of a decade trying to convince him to get a tattoo of my name.  He outrightly, emphatically, steadfastly refuses even when I challenge him to prove his love for me.

     So Tony will NOT be getting a tatt of a mocroscopic crustacean … unless I am first  immortalised on his skin!

Fruity Lexia and the Law of Karma

I have assumed there are people like me who have repressed unsavoury memories from their youth.  My memories were hazy to start with so it was easy to forget them. 

The year was 1986.  The location, a dingy, first floor flat in Durham Street, St Lucia, within walking distance of the University of Queensland where I was studying (sort of).

For many years, 27, in fact, I had forgotten about the late nights, the munchies, empty pizza boxes piled inside the front door, episodes of Prisoner and D-Generation (never missed), jars of cigarette butts decomposing in black water, wiry carpet dotted with durry burns, leaking taps and many other things I don’t want to think about.  And featuring in every snapshot of my life as a 17 year old, first year uni student was a cask or two of fruity lexia. 

Why fruity lexia?  It was cheap and it tasted the least disgusting of other cheap alcohol like Asti Spewmante and Passion Pop. 

I have no memories of making it to uni.  However I was academically saved by the good fortune of studying five full-year subjects with no semester assessment. 

Mum and Dad supported me in my first year, urging me not to work, but to devote my spare time to studying hard for my degree.

            After less than six months of this life, I’d achieved absolutely nothing except frequent blackouts and the loss of too many brain cells.  And a loathing distaste of fruity lexia. So I cleaned up my act and moved into college on campus for second semester.  I started attending lectures and befriending conscientious students so I could scab the first semester’s notes.  And I forgot I’d ever lived at Durham Street.     

            So far, so good until Good Friday.

            Our son started uni this year, far away from home. 

            “We’ll support you, son,” we said before he left.  “Don’t find a job.  Just make sure you study.” 

Good parents, Tony and I!  We’ve also spent years grooming him about the dangers of alcohol abuse as an adolescent.  Since Son is health conscious and works out, I’ve tailored my lectures so he could understand that alcohol consumption as a teenager is counter-productive to good health and fitness when the body is not fully grown (yes, I know I was grasping at straws).

            On Good Friday, Son rang to tell me he was homesick for the first time since leaving.  He wanted to know what was happening on TI and I told him.  I asked him what was happening in his world.  He said he woke with a hang over.

“How did that happen?” I asked, incredulous.

“Muuum,” he said, as if I was a moron and regaled me with tales of drinking with fellow students and waking mid-morning with head and bodyaches. 

            “How can you afford to drink?” I tried to stem my growing rage.  “Your father and I are working hard so you can study and not have to find a job.”

            “Mum, a cask of fruity lexia is only nine dollars and you get four litres,” he said as if he’d received a high distinction for a difficult subject.

            “It’s disgusting,” I said.  “It’s got no food value and you shouldn’t drink it if you care about your health.”  Panic rose in my voice.

            “We make it taste nice by adding orange juice. That’s healthy.  Or we buy bottles of lime and soda, you know, it’s a soft drink.  We sometimes add that to the goon.  There’s also V8 vegie juice which is healthy.  And Red Bull, but that’s a bit expensive so we usually just use orange juice.”

My parents’ gloating words echoed in my mind: “Granchildren are the grandparents’ revenge.”

            

When simple is best (and cheapest and easiest)

What happens when you take two Torres Strait Islander children, with a seafaring ancestry, two and a half thousand kilometres from their island home and deposit them at Dreamworld for three days?

Do you imagine them running from delightfully terrifying roller coaster to stomach turning and thrilling upside down wave twister?  Perhaps spending hours on the water slides of White Water World?  Or exploring the wildlife park, full of animals they have never seen like kangaroos (they could pat), sleepy koalas and white tigers rolling on the grass with their keepers?

Meet Kenny of Kenny’s Cruiser Hire.

This was their favourite activity.

I could have saved the exorbitant entry fee to Dreamworld and the endless two dollar coins Kenny charged for each cruise.  And their father could have let them drive his six metre Hooker with a 90 horse power outboard!