To Sydney
Australia.
I’d forgotten how wide Australian streets are. I’d forgotten how flat Australia is. I’d forgotten how ordered Australia is. How the letterboxes line up like soldiers at attention. And the rubbish bins, legions of them, like sentries along the road.
Fresh from the unruly rainforests of the South Pacific, wild roosters and their hens wandering free all over, this is a strangely regulated and underpopulated world. Nature is well disciplined. Mile after mile of wide grass verges seem to have been mowed just yesterday, trees are planted all in lines, and there are no people – they’re all in cars, of course, zooming around like speeding bullets.
In the centre of Bundaberg is the same order. Dulux must make a fortune here. Everything stationary is painted, every parking space is surrounded by a white line on the bitumen, the trees are trimmed so as not to interfere with the traffic. She is a pert town, in her Sunday best, fingernails perfect, perfume on, shoes polished. Everything is paved – an alien couldn’t be blamed for thinking the planet is made of bitumen and concrete. Even in the pleasant central parks there is military precision in the way the benches and trees line up with each other, and the grass is so perfect it looks artificial.
The locals all seem to have wide-open hearts, of course, and vowels to match. It’s so long since we’ve heard broad Aussie accents en masse that we are as fascinated as the foreigners in the beginning.
‘Okay laove, jest aover thaire – nao praoblem laove – thaireyagao – see yez lighter.’
On arrival we are thrust into days and days of partying as all the fifty-five boats in our rally arrive and are entertained by the Bundaberg Cruising Yacht Club – which is actually a bunch of dedicated and generous women of Bundaberg. Good friends fly up to welcome us and we must slip the boat for an anti-foul treatment. Busyness keeps me from wondering what is next.
We still have to get home, and soon we head southwards, the Australian coastline barely a misty ruffle in the distance. Watching it, I can’t help thinking that it wouldn’t take much global warming for most of Australia to disappear underwater. Then I guess we would be left with the island of Uluru, the Snowy Mount – er – Isles and the Great Dividing Archipelago.
I didn’t remember how green the water is here – and why can’t you see to the bottom? For instance, we anchor in three metres and I can’t see a thing – yet this is ocean water! What on earth, I ask myself, do people do on snorkelling trips?
We day-sail from anchorage to anchorage, which is pleasant, and the birds – the birds are wonderful – they serenade us every morning and evening. There are high-gliding hawks or kites, cormorants of every description, black and white pelicans (not brown) by the dozen, tiny robins, curlews and, of course, the kookaburra. So much of the world has lost its birds – let us not lose our fish, as then we should surely, just like parts of the Med, lose our birds too.
But the adrenaline flow is now missing. There’s a marina and a hardware shop around every corner, and a supermarket in every town. Our first drive on a freeway to reach the supermarket is a rude shock – the growl of hundreds of tyres, the mad jockeying for position, the speed. Our habit has been to always observe the rules of the country we visit, so we automatically obey the speed limit here too. The drivers around us are incensed.
I can’t wait to get back to the soft slushing and lapping noises of an anchorage. I can’t help remembering walking or riding our bikes to the local shops, the nearness of everything, the conviviality of the coastal walking paths, with their walkers, flower-behind-ear, saying ‘hello’ to each other and us in the afternoon sunshine.
I had also forgotten how many scary things there are in Australia. Our international cruising friends hadn’t, though. After sailing to country after country where the scariest thing is a maddened rooster running wild, they are wary of this vast flat land. Sailing across the Pacific, as we drew closer and closer to the shores of Australia – and they did their obligatory reading to prepare themselves for a new country – the questions became more numerous:
‘What about crocodiles? We see so many surfing pictures, but how can people go surfing with all the crocodiles?’
‘So many snakes – how can the children be let out to play?’
‘What about the spiders? I won’t be able to sleep!’
‘What about sharks? Looks like we shouldn’t swim at all!’
‘I read that Australia has dengue fever, Ross River fever and malaria.’
‘How big is a cane toad?’
‘Are the small kangaroos dangerous too?’
We’d also forgotten how many signs there are, and how many rules. Speed rules on the water, rules about where you can anchor, where you can swim, millions of road rules. Rules about the rubbish, rules about headwear on our bikes, rules about dogs, rules about alcohol, rules about dressing in restaurants and clubs, rules about swimming, all spelled out on officious signs in just one language. Pity the poor visitor who doesn’t speak English. Pedestrian crossings are wonderful though – cars actually screech to a stop and let you pass.
And ahhhh, the beaches . . . the reality lives up to the recollection. The eye-squinting glare, the unruly rush of the surf, the hazy salt-filled air, the bare brown bodies, striding, sleeping, kicking sand. The kids sprawling and running, the bobbing black heads disappearing underwater, reappearing, leaping, catching a wave. The strutting lifesavers, shining bodies to show off to preening bikini-clad girls. It’s all there under the purest blue dome of a sky, unchanged since I was a child, and I am (again) tearful as I stand staring at my first real Aussie beach.
Then there’s Dan Murphy. Everyone is talking about Dan Murphy. He’s a big party-thrower, I decide as I listen to the locals’ conversations. ‘We called by Dan Murphy’s, of course.’ ‘Oh, we went to Dan Murphy’s last weekend. Terrific wines.’ It takes several days to find out that this is a bottle shop! Five years ago there was no Dan Murphy – what a business success that must have been, I think. It takes several more days to learn that it’s Woolworths in disguise!
Other things have changed remarkably too. Queensland, that most conservative of Australian states, has both a female premier and a female governor. Even Bundaberg has a female mayor. This strikes me as extraordinary, but I can barely raise any interest when talking to Queenslanders.
However, gradually, we remember and forget.
We remember how to be Australian ourselves, and forget how it might appear to others. In various places, we watch the bush turkeys and ibis tramping by, listen to the high-pitched chorus of the cicadas, and when we see the bright scarlets and greens of the rosellas overhead, and the flitting lorikeets, we take them for granted. The gentle olive green of the bush no longer seems dull and lifeless, but becomes soothing and subtle. The Australian accents fade into the backdrop of living, the southerly busters arrive about once a week, and it looks just right when the long flat plains along the coast slither and smudge into the afternoon sunsets.
Finally, it all comes together to seem, somehow, just like home . . .
We’ve been drifting down the Australian east coast, very gradually. There’s no pressure for us to get home, and we both seem reluctant to rush. After all, there’s What then? What then? to worry about.
Finally, though, we can’t put it off any longer. It is a bleak grey morning, cold for this time of year, when we approach the coast. Barrenjoey Lighthouse is appearing and disappearing in the fine scudding rain. It’s not how I imagined our final approach to our home port. (In my mind I had us hurtling down the coast in bright sunshine, me on the bow in shorts and sunhat, a final triumphant arrival into the port we left in similar sunshine five years ago.) The teak of the cockpit is darkly wet, we are in snugs and wet-weather gear. There’s an unfriendly southerly wind.
There will be no boats out, even though it is a Sunday morning and friends from the yacht club have said they might come to welcome us. It’s just too miserable a morning for anyone to be out, so we think we’ll be alone as we enter our home waters of so-familiar Pittwater. We reassure ourselves that we’ll meet with friends later in the day.
I notice one boat behind Lion Island, and a motor boat in the distance under Barrenjoey. The radio spits and crackles. ‘Blackwattle, Blackwattle, this is Alfreds 1, go to Channel 77.’
‘Alfreds 1, this is Blackwattle, going up.’ Ted’s voice is tremulous – this is one of our yacht club’s official boats.
‘Blackwattle, Alfreds 1, we’re here to welcome you home. Are you intending to go inshore and then tack to port up Pittwater, over?’
‘Yes. Over,’ says Ted, suddenly monosyllabic. We can see now that the motor boat is the club boat, decked in bunting, becoming clearer in the bad light.
‘Then allow us to lead you up Pittwater, and there are several boats here to welcome you as well, over.’
‘Er, yes, okay. Over.’ Ted is lost for words.
And soon white sails start appearing round Barrenjoey Headland, one, two, three, and the sailing boat behind Lion Island turns towards us too. There are horns blaring now, we can’t tell from where.
Soon we can read familiar names. ‘Ted, look, it’s Windsong – Breakaway is over there!’ There are also names we don’t know. ‘Ocean Breeze? Who’s Ocean Breeze?’
The skipper calls out and, as if on cue, we hear his shouting against the noise of the wind. ‘I’m the commodore – c-o-mm-o-d-ore!’
The number of boats increase. Finally we can count seventeen boats, including two powerboats around us near and far. On one of the powerboats – Ross and Jenny Scobles’ Passport – I can see my daughter, waving and filming, waving and filming. No Simon. He’s in Los Angeles right now.
It’s a beat to get up the long waterway of Pittwater. We tack this way and that, back and forth, as if we were in a race. This is ridiculous, we are used to gybing every other day, not every two minutes! I reach for the key to turn the engine on!
But, as if reading my thoughts, the radio comes to life again: ‘Blackwattle, this is Alfreds 1 – the finish line is laid for you opposite the club, but if you don’t sail across the line, you’ll have to go round again.’ Round again? Round again? It takes a millisecond to sink in – he means round the world again.
So we giggle a little and tack back and forth up the ever-narrowing waterway. The sailing boats follow us, coming nearer sometimes – we wave at each other frantically – and then drifting away . . . Some are familiar faces, some we don’t know at all. We’re no longer cold, what with all the tacking, and our auto-helm works overtime doing ninety-degree turns while we handle the winches. The sun is trying to shine as we pass through flocks of tiny sailboats out for their Sunday-morning races.
Then we pass a line between the club and Alfreds 1, the ‘finish boat’, and there’s a blare of horns to tell us that our race is over. Now it’s sails down for the moment that we’ve been anticipating for months. We have tied all our courtesy flags – the ones we can find, anyway – from the countries we have visited in our circumnavigation, and Ted hoists them up the forestay as we make our final turn to berth at the T Head of our home yacht club, the Royal Prince Alfred at Newport in Sydney.
There are many hands, attached to familiar bodies, there to take our lines. Someone – Ann Asker – puts a glass of wine into my hand, and half an hour later, after hugs and kisses all round, we repair to the club for a sausage sizzle. Speeches by commodores and ex-commodores and Ted pass by in a daze, but when it’s my turn, I find it hard to speak through the tears.