Ho hum, another shitty day on the reef

So, so sick of seafood.  Can't wait for the holidays to end!

 

Wednesday night's dinner ... bottom of the barrel

I was hell bent on baked beans for supper on Wednesday night, but no. Tony took the kids and Oliver and Raman out and they obviously didn't spend enough time fishing, as in catching fish with a hook and line.  They returned with a greasy cod, a stripey young Dola caught, four shovel-nosed sharks and bait, a great bowl of sardines.  Ugh!

Dola and his stripey.  He was quick to point out that Dato Tony did NOT catch a fish that trip.

"What's for dinner, Mum?"
"Bait, darling."

The bait looked more appetising once it was floured and frying.

Shovel-nosed sharks are actually a species of stingray which I reckon makes them less appealing. I prefer the way Tony first cooked them for me, as chicken fillets in a sweet soy marinade.  I wolfed down the soft white flesh and ate a second helping. Ignorance is bliss.

Kibby grinding the garden herbs and chilli, lots of chilli, to add to the soy sauce ... to mask the taste of the shovel-nosed shark. 

I knocked up a couple of orange self-saucing puddings to make sure everyone was beliful.  Raman then announced pudding needed cream.  I couldn't bear to let down anyone who'd travelled 14,000 km on a motorbike from Victoria.  I scratched my head.  It was 7 pm and the nearest 7/11 was 700km away in Cairns.  Custard.  I scrounged in the pantry and found some cornflour and by a stroke of luck, had bought eggs earlier in the day.

The next day: shovel-nosed shark leftovers with pasta and white sauce.  It got the thumbs up from Oliver.

Tuesday night's dinner

Another feast fit for kings and queens!

Goat curry

Reef fish with kaffir lime leave soy sauce

Roast Prince of Wales deer with ginger and rosemary

     All washed down with banana (from the garden) smoothies made by Dr John.
    Feasting is fantastic, the preparation, the cooking and the eating.  Washing up is the hard bit.
    My most recent foodie foray is done with. Tonight, I am thinking baked beans. I don't even have the energy to butter bread.

Instant dinner ... just add family and friends

Two things I love about TI are spending time with special people and meeting new friends. We have more time here, quality time to spend with people who matter.  And into the bargain, TI attracts some wonderful personalities who are keen to step outside the boundaries of convention and discover something new about this part of the country.

     Well, we hit the jackpot on the first day of the September school holidays.  Family are visiting from Melbourne, Brisbane and Toowoomba (Sueche, Martina, Dusty, Savannah and Dola) and two WWOOFERS (willing workers on organic farms), Oliver and Raman arrived.  They had motorbiked up the Cape and popped over to say hello.  As you can imagine, floor space is pretty tight so Oliver whacked up his tent in the backyard and Raman is swagging it on the veranda (with the many loads of washing).

     We, as in seven Titaseys arrived on Sunday after eleven weeks away and thanks to Dr John, I didn’t have to go shopping because he cooked a sumptuous Sunday roast dinner for us.

     On Monday, I planned to buy groceries, but Seffy crashed at midday with fever caused by a bizarre, but brief virus.  By the time I settled her with a liberal dose of paracetamol and the cliffhanger chapter in Craig Cormick’s, Shipwrecks of the Southern Seas, about Barbara Thompson being rescued by the Kaurareg in 1844, the shops were closed.

     It was a bit of a bugger as there were 12 people for dinner.  And I hadn't been shopping.

     No problem.

     One of my favourite challenges on TI is making delicious meals when I don’t have half the ingredients.  Last night, I had less than half the ingredients and some of those I had were well past their use-by-date.

I had:

6 freshly caught fish

2 freshly caught crayfish (strangely, the two crustaceans vanished from the steamer when I was fetching herbs from the garden)

1 apple, starting to shrivel

1 orange, starting to shrivel

Freezer-burnt feta cheese

Red wine vinegar

Soy sauce

Garlic (from a jar, yuck!)

Raw sugar

And lots and lots of fresh produce from our back garden and friends and family to help.

Sueche and Martina fried up 2 of the snapper, with the bones (yummy) using Tony’s secret seasoning involving Keen’s Curry Powder. 

Oliver oversaw the salads being assembled and he and Raman cut up kilos of salad greens.  Kibby pulled a face!

      Here’s what we made:

Roasted fish with garden herbs.

Apple and orange salad with freezer-burnt feta.

Chop the last apple and the last apple found in the fridge, the ones starting to shrivel.

Chop fresh rocket and garden chives.

Toss fruit and greens with freezer-burnt feta, shaved while frozen.

Yum! 

Green pawpaw salad

When I get in a foodie mood (rarely) I am a big fan of Luke Nguyen’s green pawpaw salad from Songs of Sapa, but I didn’t have lemon, chilli, palm sugar ...  Infact, the only ingredient I had was green pawpaw.  I reckon if Luke tried this green pawpaw salad, he and most of Vietnam would thank me for enlightening them.

1 green pawpaw, grated.

1 packet Home Brand chopped nuts, matured for two years in fridge (may be found at back of fridge behind other items) and roasted in fry pan.

Coriander, basil and mint from the garden, chopped.

Dressing:

Red wine vinegar, heavily sweetened with lots of raw sugar.

Garlic from a jar.

Soy sauce (in lieu of fish sauce – not ideal, but what can one do?)

Toss all together.

The leftovers tasted better today!

Green garden salad

Two tomatoes (from Sueche and Martina), chopped.

1 limp carrot, grated, then chopped when limpness makes grating difficult, even dangerous.

From the garden:

Curly cale/curly spinach/Vietnamese spinach (green curly stuff, so far, name unknown)

Basil

Parsley

Dressing:

Red wine vinegar

Olive oil (Geoff McKenzie’s best olive oil all the way from his farm in South Australia)

Home brand wholegrain mustard

Salt

Don’t forget:

2 large pots of steamed rice

2 half-consumed bottles of red, one a merlot and one a cab sauv from three months ago. Mixing dregs of one with the other to make the third glass was fine. 

Happy eaters with Chinese laundry backdrop.

Bonefish and Facebook

I don't Facebook, but Tony has a face/page/profie (what is it termed?) which was set up to promote our business, Tony's Island Adventures.  Unfortunately for the business, Tony and I are hopeless at Facebooking and most things electronic and so the Facebook thing lies dormant most of the time.  Occasionally I will check to see what my two oldest sons are up to.  I want to make sure there are no dark outpourings that make sense when it's too late.  
     Often emails come from Facebook about so and so wanting to be friends or a comment by such and such.  Delete.  If I know the person, I'll flick them an email and have a good, old-fashioned e-conversation.
     Tony rarely Facebooks anything.  Last New Year he posted photos of bow hunting practice on Entrance Island, but that's about it.  
     This is where my story starts.
     Last Tuesday, 10th, Tony flew off to the Kiribati or Christmas Island which I understand is most of Kiribati.  He's on PD to learn how to catch bonefish with a fly rod.  I think it's a fly rod. A rod of some sort, anyway.  Bonefish, Tony told me, are a holy grail-type target for fisherpeople and there are plenty of bonefish in the Torres Strait.  A booming bonefish charter industry in the Strait comes to mind, yes?

     But there is one problem with Torres Strait bonefish - they're not fooled by a lure or fly.

     They are easily caught in nets (cast or set nets???), but despite hours and days of Tony trying to catch them with a rod, they have remained elusive.

     Hence the trip to Christmas Island.  He is learning how to catch them with a rod so he can offer bonefishing charters. 
     Or so he tells me.  It could be a giant fib, a clever plan hatched to get away on his own for eight long days of fishing on a small tropical island and claim he is working.  
     I'd love to know how he is going and what he thinks his chances are of catching bonefish at home, what a small, Pacific island is like, whether he is missing his family.  I am missing him dreadfully after our eight days together, alone, in Brisbane.
     But I have no idea where he is, other than Kiribati, or how to contact him.  
     He last phoned from Fiji on Tuesday, 10th September, waiting for his flight to Kiribati which left close to midnight.  
     I haven't been worried because I follow the ABC website and whenever Australians get into trouble overseas, there are always reports from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
     So far, so good, nothing.
     Last night, I was surprised to receive an email about a Facebook post from Tony Titasey.  So I logged on and there it was, a post from my darling.

being on xmas island is a awesome place,especially when you are fishing for bone fish. love it

Tony's gapu is desperate to speak to him.  I posted back.

Hello, my dear husband. Is that you posting information on Facebook about your professional development experience in Kiribati? Is there any possible way you could make contact with your family who haven't heard from you since Tuesday, 10 September. Your children are missing you. Much love, your wife.

No reply.  Then this today.

Tuesday today another great day of catching bone fish a total of 69 for the week. tomorrow flying home

I thought he was coming not tomorrow, Wednesday, but Thursday. I posted back. No reply.
A call or an email would be nice.
Oh, well.  We'll see him Wednesday or Thursday.  I won't care that he hasn't called.  I won't care than Kibby has driven me bonkers as his behaviour spirals further out of control as he misses his dad.  I just want him back.
I've been doing the single mum thing and working fulltime (new to teaching, obsessing about lesson delivery and managing behaviour, stuff that comes with being a Type A).  I am knackered.  I need Tony home to deal with his son.
If he would respond to a bloody Facebook post, I'd be able to communicate with him.

Lamb chops for dinner

Late this afternoon I remembered we had no dinner so the kids and I farewelled Tony's sister, Ann-Maree and cousin, Chey and headed to Woolworths at Raintrees.  
     Seffy and Kibby were fighting on the drive there.  Most of the fights are instigated by Kibby; he'll make a nogood face at his sister, throw something at her or take something of hers.  After warning him to change his attitude, I needed some time out from him or I'd start dressing him down in the cereal aisle or I'd smack him in the dairy section.
     As I was pushing the trolley to the meat fridges, Kibby called out, "Mum."
     I kept pushing the trolley.  He was going to either dob on Seffy or ask me to buy some crap he knows I won't buy.
     "Muum."  A little louder this time.  
     I kept pushing.  I could see the lamb chops.  I should have known that by ignoring Kibby, he would have no alternative, but to yell at the top of his voice.
     "Muuum, is this marijuana here?"

     I whipped around.  This needed dealing with, but I my attention was caught by the woman behind him who had doubled over, apparently collapsing, her face cherry-red. Luckily I did a CPR course last year.  I needed to call Triple Zero then check for breath and a pulse.  The woman straigtened up with a big grin and I realised she was laughing.
     "Mum, is this marijuana?" Kibby pointed to a display of herbal teas.
     "No, it's not," I said, one eye on the lady who was relating the situation to her partner, also laughing.  "You can't buy marijuana in supermarkets."
     "Are you sure?" said Kibby.  "It looks like it."
     The lady put her hands over her face, now maroon in colour. 
     "Um, ah, mmm," I said, "look, lamb chops.  You wanted lamb chops for dinner."

The pawpaw doesn't fall too far from the tree!

I had no idea Seffy had to give a speech at school, If I was prime minister for a day ... until the night before when she asked me to help her with the timing.
These are all her words and ideas (and her grammar).
How lovely to think she's taking up the gauntlet.  I wonder how old candidates need to be for endorsement in the Torres Shire Council elections.  Then we'd see some good governance on the issue!
It's also lovely that she thanked her audience for listening ... something I am not yet able to offer the council re my letters about dangerous dogs.

PM Speech

Good afternoon year 6.

If I was Prime Minister for a day, I would stop animal cruelty.

There is too much cruelty to dogs and cats on Thursday Island. 

For example, the Torres Shire Council on Thursday Island does not enforce by laws that tell people they have to look after their dogs and cats.

People are letting dogs wander around and don’t care if they bite people when people are riding or walking or running.

People are not getting vaccinations, flea and tick treatments and not getting them spayed. 

That causes dogs to get covered in ticks and fleas, get sick and have too many puppies that don’t get looked after and they sometimes die.

People are hitting them and kicking them.

Cats aren’t getting fed so they go to the beach to get turtle and dugong guts to eat when hunters slaughter them. 

Any crocodiles that come to get the turtle and dugong guts can eat the cats.

Some cats have even got drowned by the council when they got caught.

If I was Prime Minister, I would make the Torres Shire Council make people look after cats and dogs and do the right thing or make pay them pay lots of money.

Vote for me year 6 and together we will save cats and dogs and stop people and children being bitten by dogs.

Thank you for listening.

Yo! Just goin' for a stroll to check out the bitches!

Gapu blong Tony

Late on Tuesday, I arrived in Cairns, excited to see Kibby and Seffy after a week in Brisbane.  However, Kibby's behaviour spiralled out of control within minutes of me walking in.  
     Why?  
     Tony wasn't with me.  Kibby loves his dad.  On TI, they spent every spare moment together, fishing, cleaning the chainsaw and whippersnipper, rigging fishing gear, fishing and having cups of tea.  

     While we've been in Cairns, Kibby hasn't coped without his dad.
     The day after I got back from Brisbane, I took the kids to KMart to print photos for Kibby's timeline project.  Kibby was in a foul mood before we left home so I was in damage control.  I just wanted to print the bloody photos and get home without killing him.
     "You can't tell me what to do," he said when I told him to get out of the car on arrival at Smithfield Shopping Centre.   "Fuck you."
     "You've got three.  One, two, good."
     At the post office he produced every sale item suitable for anyone under 15, begging me to buy them for him.
     No, no, no.
     "I hate you!"
     He vanished.  I caught him hiding behind a bin, barefoot, a bad haircut (thanks to himself then me then sister, Ashlea) and crouching like Nobody's child.
     "Stay next to me," I said as he disappeared.  
     Stuff you, I thought.  
     Then I remembered he's missing his dad.  Tony's mum calls Kibby 'gapu blong Tony' meaning Tony's sucker-fish.  Isn't that sweet?  I always think of that metaphor and them together when I feel like wringing Kibby's neck.  It conjures up images of the sea, of Tony and Kibby sharing moments fishing and diving, of Tony's connection to the sea and how he has passed on his love of solwata to Kibby.  Awww.  If I didn't get sentimental at times like that, I would wring Kibby's neck.
     When I emerged from KMart, Kibby was lurking behind the carousel, colourful and cheerful, all wrong at the time.  I felt my wile come up and sentimentality drain away.
     "If you take off again, I'll flog you," I said.  
     A passerby frowned as if I was in the wrong!
     After a few more terse warnings and him sneaking up and down the aisles of Coles, I got him in the car. 
     "That was disgusting behaviour," I began to lecture him.  "I was printing photos for your project and you take off.  You are so ungrateful.  I can't believe ..."
     "I wish Kevin Rudd got in," he said over my droning, "so I could have gone to New Zealand with Bubu."
     So do I, I thought.

My son is safe

It's been something of a cliffhanger of a night for me.  At 6 pm, Tony and I cuddled up on the lounge, in the freezing Brisbane cold and watched Australia Votes with Kerry O'Brien, Annabel Crabb and Antony Green (of whom I am very fond and I love watching him talk seats, swings and statistics and think, he is sooo clever and I must stop gushing).  
     Mum planned to cross the Tasman with Kibbim if Kevin Rudd won.  So I needed to know, ASAP if Rudd was in or if Abbott was getting the top job (then I could breathe a sigh of relief) and get on with the job of enjoying Antony Green's analysis, after all, it happens only every couple of years.  
     To be honest, I quite like having Mum around so I felt Rudd needed to go.  In fact, if Rudd pulled through I'd be really sad.  Mum has done all the cooking and homework with the kids since early July.  I don't like cooking or doing homework.  
     Early in the evening, I was heartened by what started out as a 'crushing defeat' for Labor, thinking my son was safe.  
     But the crushing defeat became a less despairing defeat and I just didn't understand enough about politics or statistics to know either way.  If the Coalition was doing so well, why wasn't the election being called?  
     I was wondering whether I would have to start writing a book titled, Not with my son.      Where the hell was Tony Abbott?  He'd been 'quietly confident' of a win, but I wanted to hear that victory speech, the one politicians make when they are flanked by their families and people are cheering in the background.  That way I'd know my son was safe and I could get on with writing the sequel to My Island Homicide.  From all the hype in the media, Abbott should have been popping the corks before seven o'clock.
     At eight, Labor seats were still falling, but no concession by Rudd.  The anticipated swing against Labor in Queensland didn't happen.  Would that change things?
     Would someone make a definitive call, please?
     Thank God for Joe O'Brien and the easy-to-understand virtual parliament with lots of blue Gumbies and not so many red ones.  I reckon I can relax now.  My son is safe and I can resume writing the sequel to My Island Homicide.

Getting worried

It's the election tomorrow and I am in Brisbane for my book launch with Tony.  Kibby and Seffy are in Cairns with my mum.  That's what is worrying me as polling day approaches.  
     Here's why.
     Last week, the kids and I were in the car, waiting at the Stanton Road lights.
     "If Kevin Rudd gets in," said Kibby, "I'm going to New Zealand."
     I bloody well knew where that came from.  Kibby knows his fish, a guppy from a gourami and a giant trevally from a golden trevally, a blue fin tuna from a bonito.  I don't believe for a minute he knows Labor from Liberal. 
     When we got home, I marched into Mum's room where she was reading on her bed. She looked up.
     "Kibby said he's going to New Zealand if Rudd gets in," I said and was about to continue.
     "Yes, he's coming with me," she said, all innocent.
     So now I'm worried because there the possibility that Mum will skip the country with my son.
     Seffy is safe.  She won't go anywhere without Billy the rescue dog. There isn't time for Mum to organise a pet transfer through NZ customs so Seffy is safe.
     I've just seen that Bob Hawke regrets Labor didn't go to the polls sooner, but I can't relax completely.
     I caught up with my brother, Stephen, the day before Tony and I flew out to Brisbane.
     "Make sure you're with the kids all day," I said, "and don't leave them alone with our mother unless Abbott's been declared the winner."