Back again!!

Here I am, a year later, with no inspiration and nothing in mind. What to do? Give up? As I sit here at the coal face of old age, no gainful employment is possible. 

The last post…….For a while , anyway.

I won’t be posting anything more for the time being, as I am going back to my Ancestry research, trying to fill the holes in my history.   Having done quite a lot of work on this project, I need to try to put it all together. Thank you for joining me on this blog. Best wishes and kindest regards,

Margaret 

The small, mundane tasks of life are like stitches in the tapestry of time , stop doing them and you will start to unravel.

Which is where I am at the moment.  In my usual quest for something interesting to do to fill

the 3 hour time slot of 9 until 12,  I have been playing around with the Xero accounting programme.  I have been tinkering on and off with this for a few years now, helping my daughter with her accounting, but have gotten no smarter or better or more understanding of it.  So, in an effort to stop brain fade overtaking me, I have decided to make myself a new project, studying Xero.  Not just operating on the surface blindly, knowing just enough to haphazardly use it.  So, every day, I peer through the portal into the programme.   

And you know what, I am starting to get it.  However, once I get immersed in something like this,  I tend to just overlook and leave the myriad small tasks of life, including eating.  My computer takes over my brain.

So, the message for today is, do not neglect the small issues of your life. Do them as they pop up but put a time limit on them. Even go so far as to set your timer.  

As I am always saying to other people, “Keep your eyes on the prize”.  I should take my own good advice. 

Cheung Chao Island

My Chinese Good Luck…..

And I don’t mean a Fortune Cookie

Seeing as how I am now time travelling backwards, I have started thinking about how I got started on my trail to the East.  I just decided one day to go to Hong Kong.  To my family, this looked like a crazy idea.  This was era 1988 or thereabouts, and we were now trading at Victoria Park Market in Auckland.  Just a little stall, seven days a week, but it became our lifestyle.

I was interested in sourcing products from overseas that we could sell in Auckland, and so Hong Kong seemed a good starting point. In the face of fierce opposition from my husband , I casually packed my only luggage, a small cabin bag, and told everyone I was going to Sydney for a few days. Which was true, that’s where the plane put down, and I didn’t bother to elaborate on my plans to venture further afield. I had actually no plans, went to a travel agent a couple of days later, who sold me a ticket to Bali and onwards to Hong Kong, travelling the next day.  The major problem I struck, silly me, was that my passport only had six months left on it, and that would have me stopped from entering Bali.

So, with the prospect of the plane leaving in the morning bound for Bali, and me not on it, I phoned the Indonesian Consulate, based in Sydney, great people, who kindly stayed in their office a bit later  to give me an entry visa to Indonesia. Then began my epic travels to Bali. But that’s another whole story. This one is about Hong Kong.

A friend had given me her ex-pat son’s phone number and I contacted him. He took me around Hong Kong, showed me the sights, helped me with my business research, and then, joy of joys, he took me on a day trip by ferry to one of the outer islands of Hong Kong.  Cheung Chao.   The big ferry was very clean and comfortable, we went right out in the South China Sea. As we approached the island, there were a number of large wooden fishing junks strung out along the outer perimeter of the harbour, what a sight!!  To me, something out of Marco Polo.

My friend’s son was taking me to meet another expat who was living with his Chinese girlfriend on the island. What a charming village Cheung Chao was in those days. No cars, everyone was on foot, and from a distance out to sea it looked a lot like the Greek fishing villages, very colourfully painted.

After lunch, we went for a walk around the island, visiting small temples all along the way. We finally came to quite a large temple, and, as I looked in the door, I saw a group of people throwing sticks onto the floor.  When I asked our Chinese girl companion what they were doing, she said they were throwing joss sticks to predict their future.

“Okay, she said to me, “you’re next”. The others had had their fortunes told, it was always the same, good luck, lots of money, lots of children etc, tourist stuff I suspect. I went reluctantly forward to the man conducting the ceremony, took the joss sticks and threw them.  As I looked at him, his face suddenly changed dramatically, as though he was in shock.  When I asked our companion what had happened, she said “You have thrown one of the highest numbers anyone can achieve”. She also said that he didn’t believe that a Westerner could come into his holy temple and do that. It was unheard of.

The meaning to me of that joss stick throw was that I am an exceptionally lucky person, and while I have no religious views, I have clung to my Chinese Good Luck for the rest of my life, and when the chips were down, it was there for me. 

Aquascene Fish Feeding 

Episode 10

 I thought  Darwin was a great little city, perched in isolation on the edge of the continent, and one of the nicest places I have been to.  The temperature at this time of year, April, May,  is around 34 degrees, which sounds  pretty hot, but it didn’t affect me at all.  The use of ceiling fans is widespread, running at full speed all the time.  The cost of living seemed to be on a par with Auckland  and the city itself was clean with no slums apparent,  as the loss of buildings in the cyclone was around nine thousand, and I guess anything that wasn’t in good shape would have been blown away.

On the tourist trail, I saw such things as huge saltwater crocodiles,  jumping out of the water,  to snatch meat from the rangers ( this was during  a boat trip on the Adelaide River).  The crocodiles have been protected for a long while now, and the population has increased so much, that the authorities are going to re-introduce culling.  I was told that the ocean  around Darwin is totally unsafe and unswimmable and I didn’t see any small boats , sail boats or water skiers in the  harbour, even though the weather was great and the water clean and warm.

Apparently, the crocodiles can see you coming and are able to  completely submerge under the water for more than an hour .  Then, they just come up and grab you and take you away.  There are a few people taken by crocodiles, but this kind of event doesn’t get much publicity. They probably don’t want to scare off the tourists. The Darwin Council even employs a “crocodile catching team” much in the same way as they employ a “dog catching team” The crocodile rangers, so I heard, take hundreds of crocodiles out of the Darwin Harbour each year .The crocodiles can apparently roam for twenty kilometres or so from the inland waterways, and are found in all sorts of places ---billabongs, creeks and rivers – even backyard swimming pools. I was warned that no waterway is safe in the Northern Territory or Far North Queensland.

As part of my tourist exploits, I visited the Museum and the War Museum, and saw evidence of how much Australia was kept in ignorance of the Japanese bombing raids, during World War Two. I also went to Acuascene and saw the marvellous sight of huge fish coming inshore into ankle deep water,  and taking bread  from the hands of the tourists.  I didn’t get to go to the Mindil Night Market,  as it is held from  dusk onwards  and I didn’t have any transport,  I was a bit reluctant to find myself on  a dark beach with no way to get back  to the YWCA, excepting on foot.

All in all, I had a great trip everywhere I went.  The weather was very good with little rain to spoil it. The best time of year to go to the Far North, is in the dry season.

“These Boots Are Made For Walking”, sang Nancy Sinatra, and I only wish I could.

 . 

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Kakadu

Episode 9

On to Darwin.

The plane was, once again, a 70-seater, and it was a very smooth and enjoyable flight.  We put down on a small island in the Gulf of Carpentaria , a place called Groote Island, where there is a mining settlement.  I could have left the plane for a while, but I couldn’t see any point, as the stop was like a bus-stop pickup.  Most of the scenery on this flight path was very drab and repetitive until we flew over what must have been the Kakadu region.  There were huge, craggy, outcrops of land dotted with split mountains and chasms  cut deep into the earth.  Darwin Airport was pretty upswept for the Far North, but I guess it was rebuilt after the cyclone a few years earlier.  I took the shuttle into the city and went to the YWCA, where I was going to stay –at the huge cost of $30 a night.

The “Y” was, as usual, a good central place to stay, only minutes into town by taxi and it was also on the main bus route.  Joy of joys, I could wash my clothes. By now, I was desperate, as I was travelling with so little tropical gear. However, my burdens had been added to by the huge box that Andrew’s offsider had packed my artefacts in.

  And so I started on my half-day tours.  These were great value for money.  I was going to go to Melville Island, but when I found out just what was involved in getting there – a flight on a very small plane, four wheel drive vehicle, a trip in a very small boat, and then doing it all again to get back to Darwin, I chickened out.  I felt pretty exhausted from my earlier exploits at Gove. I looked at the Kakadu option, but once again, it seemed physically too hard for me. The trip was by four wheel drive vehicle  and it was stipulated that you must be reasonably fit, which I must admit, I wasn’t at that stage.  I decided to leave this hard adventure stuff  alone until I could do another trip, where I would fly straight to Darwin, via Alice Springs  with a stop at Cooperpedy (the opal mining town in Central Australia, 

Episode 8

We ran into a considerable storm on the way back , and the water had risen in quite a lot of the streams we had crossed on  the way into the bush.  At the final one, the water was over the bonnet of the Toyota, which gave me a bit of a fright . We made it with no trouble.

Not long after that, we stopped to gather some bark for the aboriginal painters, and I was amazed to see Andrew, standing on the roof of the Toyota,  stripping this from the Stringy Bark trees with an axe – he does all the preparation for the artists, which is quite a job in itself.  No wonder this type of work is so expensive, and as the painters also only use natural ochre, manganese and white chalk for their work,  it is all very authentic.

There was certainly a big storm in progress, so I was lucky that I had flown into Gove  the day before.  No planes were able to  land or take off  and, one quite big passenger plane had flown so far around to avoid the wild weather that it was running out of fuel.  It had to put down at a big station airfield to take on more.  That would have been a treat for nervous fliers.