Hired a car just to get around and have something to do, the rain was never ending.
Met Nick and Nicky again, Chris’s old school friends for a lovely lunch at a yacht club and it was fun to catch up.
As the sun came out and I could start living again we found a fun park just around the corner that wasn’t to busy as everybody was in school, saying that, there was few kids that was older and the kids hooked up and I got chatting to the mum. Jodie lives in Sunshine Coast and we ended up meeting again next day and got invited for a swim at their rental place. How cool is that. Her kids are great and we are still in contact.
We also met a family with a boy about Alice’s age in the marina and that was the start of a great friendship between them and us parents. Did have few drinks and late night chats together, telling stories and us giving them some advice on sailing.
The highlight was to see an aboriginal show. The story told their side of the story and I have to say, we learnt some shocking facts that doesn’t particularly get mentioned in school books…..like the settlers put poison in the flour that they handed out to the aboriginals…..
The show took you from indoors to outdoors as the story unfolded. It was brilliantly put together and very interesting.
The other weird thing was as the settlers was busy grabbing land and preaching the bible, building churches, the aboriginals weren’t aloud to go to the church even as they tried to civilise them….
Now, nearly a year later I was told about this book called The young emu by Bruce Pascoe. What a book. Read it if you can. I have just started reading it for Charlie and Alice and it’s based on the notes from the first settlers.
We have all been lead to believe that the aboriginals were nomadic Hunter- gatherers at that time who literally threw sticks and stones BUT it was nothing like it. There is written notes of settlements, growing crops and plants and communities living together. It will tell you how devastating the cattle and sheep that was brought over was for their crops as the animals chewed through it….how the ground got to hard from the animals and then difficult to grow on…..how they lost their food source, how they had to rely on hand outs….and I’m only on page 4!
The next few days we went out with the bikes, down to beaches and getting ready to leave again. Bundaberg being the next stop. Should be couple of days of sailing as we have to go all the way around Frazier island. Other boats with less draft can cut through Sandy straights. Again, didn’t know what a shit trip was coming our way…..
The start was a bit choppy, no big deal. The night went well even as it blew a good 30 knots plus. As I read the weather forecast the wind should have changed from a southerly to more east/ southeast as we were to change course for Bundaberg but oh no…..it didn’t. It went more south west which meant we were going straight into it….with a current against us as well. We were banging against everything, engine on the full refs, moving forward at couple of knots. I thought the night was forever. What we should have done was to just run with it and go somewhere else, plenty of islands around…..but anyway.
We finally arrived and anchored and needless to say, crashed out.
Following day we went into the marina and hired a car. We had no intentions of being there for long and luckily we didn’t know that we were going to be there for couple of months as things started to go wrong…..
moodyfinn 