Well, as of Wednesday last (22nd June) here we are safely anchored in Fannie Bay Darwin, in readiness to say a final (I hope) farewell to Australia when we leave here on the 23rd July and head for Indonesia.
As those of you who take the time to read our irregular epistles will be aware, the Australian leg of our journey has been, to say the least, a great disappointment. Forgetting for the moment that Australia is by far and away the most expensive country we have visited, the reasons for out disenchantment is primarily, but not exclusively, due to the fact that we are somewhat unusual visitors, in that not only are we on a sailing yacht, but that we have with us Rubbish our pet African Grey parrot on board, who is a lot less welcome than a boat load of illegal immigrants arriving unannounced on Christmas Island.
The over riding pathos of Australian society today, is obviously based upon the historical precedent set, when society was divided into two categories, those that made and enforced the laws, and generally acted as jailers, and those that had to obey. The situation today is little changed, with laws emanating from all directions, Federal. State and Local, in many cases quite a few contradicting each other. So you can imagine the fun the multitude of boys in uniform can have under these circumstances.
Despite negotiating the terms and conditions that would apply to our travelling with the bird prior to arriving in Australian waters, and reconfirming these restrictions in writing, duly signed and approved by the Quarantine officials who inspected the yacht upon our arrival, we have constantly been the victims of varying interpretations of the written word, including adding restrictions not previously mentioned, and blatant disregard of the terms previously agreed upon.
This has resulted in our being unable to take on fuel, or water, without carrying it in cans from the nearest fuel station into the dinghy, (often up to 400 litres at a time) out to the yacht at anchor (not allowed to enter into a marina and tie up to Australia), nor are we allowed to slip the boat in order to clean the hull or effect running repairs below the water line without breaking someone’s interpretation of the rules.
Added to this we are now forbidden from anchoring off any port that does not have a Quarantine office located there. This has been further exacerbated by the fact that only the major harbours have this facility, and about 50% of them have local laws which prohibit anchoring. The net result of these new restrictions has been that we have been unable to visit the famous beauty spots that would have been the highlight of our Australian sojourn, such as the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef. We even had to sail past the port of Bowen (see note later) to visit my ancestors.
In a complete reversal of our written agreement, poor old Rubbish is now condemned to spend his entire time secured below decks, and not only, as previously agreed, when we are absent from the yacht.
For those of you who are familiar with that long standing British institution called the “Automobile Association” or the “AA” I now believe that all the “AA” men must have been trained here in Australia. As the predominant theme we have encountered here has been “Eh! Eh! You can’t do this”, and “Eh! Eh! You can’t do that” no matter what it is., I believe the local equivalent is actually the” AAAA”, or the “Association of Australian Authoritarian A--holes”
Whilst I am in an Aussie bashing mood, I feel I have to suggest that Australians, particularly Sydney Australians should, with immediate effect change their collective noun referring to their race from Australian to Australese. I make this suggestion based on the fact that at least 3 out of every 4 people you see on the streets are either from or descended from, somewhere where the collective noun for their relatives ends in ese. i.e. Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, etc.
Indeed it has been muted that the strength of the local economy owes its situation as much to the diligence of these immigrants as it does to the abundance of natural recourses found under the layers of flies and kangaroo droppings that abound. It is probable, that a constant source of chagrin to the right wing political sector of the Australian Political spectrum could be that, as my old grandfather used to maintain, that “two Wongs do not make a white” he really did have an acute speech impediment on times.
On a personal basis, I have discovered that my ancestors were obviously divided into two categories, One bunch having a criminal bent, but not enough acumen not to get caught, and the balance (to date including yours truly) who got away with years of undetected crime.
I suggest this as there are multitudes of people here in Australia with the surname Bowen, even some holding prominent public office, there is a reasonable sized town Called Bowen,(which we were not allowed to visit) Also a variety of Mango supporting this tag, not to mention a medical reflexology type procedure that is very widely advertised here.. On top of that there are two towns bearing the name of my birthplace i.e. Swansea one in Tasmania and one on the Australian east coast,(which we were also not allowed to visit); not of course forgetting a whole state called New South Wales; which only goes to support my theory on how many careless ancestors I must have.
One of the most original concepts of population control that I have come across is the subtle one developed by the Australese, and that is that they have taken all the cyclists in the country, and removed them off the roads, and moved them to, no, not special cycle tracks, but to join the pedestrians on the pavements. In order to make this concept of population control more efficient, they seem to have instructed the bicycle manufacturers to immediately cease marketing their produce with any vestige of a means of making their presence heard. Yep no bells, nor horns.
Sharing the pavements with this stealthy silent highly mobile form of transport / recreation is bad enough when you can see them coming, albeit often at a fast rate of knots, but when they sneak up behind, often on a pavement only wide enough for the two of us walking side by side, things take on a very much higher level concern regarding self preservation. All very confusing in a country that in all other respects is health and safety paranoid. I even tried fitting wing mirrors to my floppy hat, but the corks obstructed the view. So we have now reverted to the time honoured African custom of walking single file, with Shirley the customary 3 paces behind me. (good protection eh).
The last leg of our journey to get to Darwin was from a city called Townsville, this entailed an island and reef dodging trip north inside the Barrier Reef, (so complex was that section of the trip that we had to use some 27 waypoints or course turning points in 350 miles. Great fun especially at night) which culminated in our taking a short cut through a narrow pass called Albany Passage which helped take us around the most northerly tip of Australia (Cape York).This posed a special set of challenges, as we really wanted to do this during daylight, but to complicate things it was necessary to enter the passage on a rising tide as the tidal current is somewhat awesome. Well I am proud to announce that we hit the entrance (not literally) 30 minutes after sunrise, which exactly coincided with the beginning of the rising tide. Shirley of course maintained that this was pure luck, but I maintain that I must have assimilated some semblance of omnipotence, well, timing our arrival at dawn was pretty good, but convincing the tide to change at the same time takes some doing don’t you agree? So through the passage we charged and out we popped at the northern end like a cork out of a bottle.
Then there was the long slog across the north of Australia via the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Arafura Sea until we reached the Dundes Straight, where we had to bear left to start our duck down towards the Clarence Straight and on to Darwin. It was at this point that my newly acquired control over the tides and currents deserted me for a while, and it took us another 2 days to cover the circa 150 nautical miles to Darwin. A combination of zero wind and a tidal race generated by a 7.000m tidal range can cause havoc with the best laid of plans. But thankfully we arrived at the anchorage again just on sunrise on the 22nd June and by the time we had found a spot to anchor that made allowance for the 7.000m drop in sea level at low tide, I was hard pressed to see the shore without the aid of binoculars.
So here we are in Darwin, and so we will remain until the 23rd July when we join in with an excess of 100 other yachts who have joined the “Sail Indonesia Rally” going to Kupang in Timor Indonesia . Now that should be interesting, all those yachts, travelling to the same destination, at the same time, probably using the same way points on their GPS systems, but all at varying speeds. Should be fun.
Well that’s that for that.
Regards to one and all
Taffy, Shirley and Rubbish.
