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.

 . 

.

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.

Gove beach on Arafura Sea 

Episode 7

The trip was full of eventful little episodes like this , but we saw lots of wonderful pockets of rainforest , complete with parrots and all sorts of bird life.  After fording other small rivers and creeks, we arrived at the first aboriginal outstation.  Here I met the very old aboriginal painter, who was waiting for his supplies of bark.  However, a problem had struck him.

His tractor had run out of diesel on the beach at the next aboriginal outstation, and he asked if  we would take him there and give him some diesel.  Of course, this was no problem, so he climbed into the front seat with us, and I hoped he would tell me something about himself.  He spoke very little  English,  but his vibes were of a very gentle person.  As we drove along the track, suddenly two emus were flushed out of the bush --- and they were big ones!!  “Look at that!!” the old man cried, “ I’ll come back later and get those”.  The emus were running wildly along in the bush, almost parallel to the Toyota,  so I got a really good look at them. They were fast, but they were destined for dinner.

We eventually arrived at the next aboriginal outstation to find no-one at home.  But ,in the distance, along a beautiful, wild, sandy, hot, beach, we could see a group of people, and Andrew told me that these were the aboriginals from the out-station we had just called at, and they were gathering their native foods, which were seafood and yams etc.  We dropped the old man at his tractor and started back to the first out-station. Here we picked up a few aboriginals for the ride back to town.  When I asked them how they were going to get back, they told me they were going to take a small plane (these 4 or 6 seaters are used almost like taxis), and the aboriginal outstations have their own small airstrips

A Gove beach 

Episode 6

The next day I went over to the Art centre and bought some bark paintings, which were quite expensive. I also bought some other artefacts, but as everything was expensive, I couldn’t buy as much as I would have liked.  Then Andrew suggested that we take a trip out to one of the aboriginal outstations, as he had to deliver some bark to one of the painters.  This was for a commission he was having done for an American gallery.  This sounded like a great idea to me , but as he gathered up his aboriginal offsider, he was checking off a list……..have we got the winch ----have we got the ropes ----have  we got 20 litres of water----have we got spare diesel ?  At this point I started to get a bit nervous, after all, this was only going to be a day trip into the bush, wasn’t it?

Once again, I climbed hand-over-hand into the Toyota and off we went.  As I said, the roads are all Bauxite ( the stuff they are  mining to make aluminium and the reason Gove exists at all ) and drove for some considerable distance …the land is all flat and the trees look all the same , with a few little palms and bushes. Andrew asked his offsider “Now, where do we turn off?”   The man replied that we had to look out for Pandanus palms and the tall ant-hill.  “There it is!” shouted Andrew.  Great excitement allround , and I kept looking for a road off this landmark, but all I could see were a couple of wheel ruts and a lot of bush.  However, that didn’t deter the Toyota,  so off we drove into the practically unmarked wilderness.  The first creek we came to was a decided challenge. “Isn’t this the creek that Wills got stuck in last week?” asked Andrew.  We took to the bank at high speed, as the other side was so steep and slippery, that if you weren’t travelling fast, you could forget it. The Toyota just surfed through the creek, with the water lapping at the top of the bonnet.  Luckily for us, we came through with flying colours on the other side. Whew!!

Gove Painting 

Episode 5

 Andrew was there to meet me. What a relief it was to see him, but a bit of a shock too.  He was very tall, about 35 years old or so, with bare feet and this huge old Toyota land cruiser. He was the curator of an Aboriginal Art Centre, and a very well educated person, but it seemed unusual to see such a person wearing no shoes. However, he greeted me enthusiastically and put my gear into the Toyota , and boy, was I glad I had on my “Crocodile Dundee” clothes – cotton shirt and pants—as the climb into the Toyota was quite a hand-over-hand experience. I’ve never driven in anything so big, complete with bull bars to run down any roving wildlife.

Anyway, we went onto the aboriginal reserve area,  where I was going to stay with Andrew at his house.  On the way, we met one of the leading aboriginal figures of the region, a man whose name escapes me, but who was in a famous Australian band. Andrew introduced him to me as the person who had given me permission to be on the aboriginal land.  The people living in this area are all aboriginals as the only Europeans at this time were Andrew, his wife and children. The houses were made of galvanised iron  I think, with louvres running up and down the whole length of the walls of the houses, so they can be opened up to let the air in.  They all looked tidy from the outside, with mesh on the windows to keep out the mosquitos and flies.

The  Art Centre was pretty swept up for a facility of its kind in a remote area, complete with air-conditioning for the works of art. I think a lot of Government money, plus money from other sources, has gone into making this a unique development.

Andrew’s house was originally the Mission House, probably built in the 1920’s and  louvred from wall to ceiling. It had power and a proper toilet and there were ceiling fans.  I spent the evening, after a meal, watching videos of aboriginal corroborees, and that was very informative

“Don’t worry if you have no position: worry about making yourself worthy of one. Don’t worry if you aren’t known and admired: devote yourself to a life that deserves admiration.”
― Confucius, The Analects

This is where Gove is

Episode 4

Off  to Gove Peninsula.  I was a bit worried about this sector. I had been trying to reach the man I was going to stay with, but couldn’t get him by phone,  and the one time I did get through , I left a message with a woman who didn’t speak much  English.  Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  I took the flight from Cairns, in the afternoon, on a smallish plane,  and had a lovely scenic flight over the Great Barrier Reef – the plane flew relatively low and I could see the reef very clearly, the sea was emerald green and smooth, and the reef was a darker blue. I was so lucky with the weather, as it had rained off and on in Cairns. Then we flew over Cape York Peninsula, which is pretty drab and barren and largely uninhabited. However, one interesting thing I saw was a large circle, with smaller circles inside it.  I don’t know what it was, but it looked like some sort of target for out-of-space reconnaissance.  The crew couldn’t enlighten me, either. Then we flew over the Gulf of Carpentaria, which I seem to remember is the Arafura Sea…what a lovely smooth, pale blue,  silken colour, the sky and sea merged to become one. It was very difficult, looking at it, to recognise where we were flying…in the sky or in the sea.  Then we flew over Gove Peninsula and the terrain was all drab green with great streaks of red earth.

The airport at Gove at least had a sealed all-weather landing strip, but the airport itself, at that time  was just like you would imagine ,very basic , and the luggage was tossed out  of the plane into a wire enclosure, with no roof.  So, if it rained , you can imagine the joy of your bags getting drenched by a tropical downpour.  By now, some 20 years later, the airport has been been upgraded.  None of the roads were sealed, but were very good, as the bauxite, which the aluminium is extracted from, is very smooth, and as the weather was  still unsettled, the dust hasn’t gotten bad yet……

Kuranda North Queensland 

Episode 3

The next day was Sunday and I had booked to go on Ye Olde Train trip up to Kuranda, a small city set in the mountains inland from Cairns.  In fact, Ye Olde Train was, in fact, far  less delightful than the trains from Shorncliffe, Brisbane, which were my daily ride to school and work.   These elegant, somewhat shabby, antique, carriages were right out of a Western movie, but we didn’t even like them, admire them or appreciate them.  Who needs fancy woodwork and real leather seats  and real mirrors when you are being pulled along by a coal fuelled train, manned with real train drivers  and genuine men, who shovelled coal into them to keep them movin’ along…..

 I came back from Kuranda via the Sky Rail , in gondolas , over the top of the rainforest.  This Skyrail journey was seven and a half kilometres long, across the tops of  the mountains (the Atherton Tablelands, I think). I loved every minute of the ride – we went right over the tops of the trees, over huge mountains and gorges, waterfalls and lakes, then a spectacular ride to the getting-off point , which must have been a couple of kilometres.

The following day, Monday, I was due to fly to Gove in the afternoon, so I had to fill in Monday morning.  I took a boat ride around Cairns Harbour, what a load of junk that was.  Really, all the commentator had to describe were the naval patrol boats moored at the wharves and you can imagine how interesting that was.  And four or five different types of mangrove trees growing along the muddy reaches of “the harbour”.  At least we saw a couple of lonely crocodiles sunning themselves on the banks, and I overheard a nice little story being recounted by the boat driver to one of his friends—he was telling him that, in the week before, a tour operator had taken a load of tourists over to Green Island (a tourist resort) and had dropped them off.  The tourists came running back, saying there were crocodiles on the beach. The tour operator said “rubbish” and went and checked anyway, and, sure enough, some crocodiles had escaped from a nearby crocodile farm and were marching up the tourist beach….

All in all, I got the impression that Cairns is a nice little northern city .   I think they must have a great public relations team working for them, as the ads we see here in New Zealand are about a vibrant, exciting city, with lots to see and do. I didn’t get to any of the resorts, which judging by their photos, are truly great holiday places, in fact , tropical paradise.  

Cairns Lagoon

Episode 2

The first bus tour I took was to Port Douglas, some ninety minutes by coach from Cairns. The countryside on the trip was flat and boring, and when we hit the coast road it improved a bit, but none of it was in any way spectacular. I suspect that I am spoiled with the great scenery we have around every corner in New Zealand.  There are no surfing beaches right along the coast of the north, as the Great Barrier Reef shelters it.

I only saw half a dozen swimmers, along the miles and miles of coastline, and I suspect they were tourists.  These coastal waters are infested with the box jelly fish stingers, which can kill you, and salt water crocodiles, which have the delightful ability to stand just beneath the surface of the water, on their tippy toes, balefully watching you for up to an hour. There is no mention of this in any of the tourist guide books for the area, and I saw in the local Port Douglas newspaper that a couple of tourists had been hospitalised just that week with stinger injuries.  There are large bottles of vinegar on all the beaches, as “first aid”, as the vinegar can help neutralise the stings.

However, back to Port Douglas. It looks just like all of the other small tourist towns you see dotted along the coast of Eastern Australia. As I was on what was really a “whistlestop tour”

I didn’t get to see any of the lovely resort areas, which I am sure, would rival Bali.  I spent an hour or so looking around the shops, eating an icecream and waiting for the bus ride back to Cairns. However, I did enjoy the ride, until the bus driver, who was running late, dumped all of the tourists in the centre of Cairns instead of running them back to their  hotels, as he was supposed to..   He didn’t count on me!! All of the tourists got shoved off to find their own way back to their hotels, but I just sat there and demanded that he take me back to the apartments. He didn’t like it at all, but tough!!

To be continued…..

Cairns, North Queensland 

                                                                                               

Episode 1

Exciting times…

Travelling.  I have been a really lucky person, in that a lot of the countries I visited had places you wouldn’t find on a tourist map, and Episode one  is about North Queensland and the Northern Territory of Australia.  This was the very last trip of my life, as I had major heart surgery a few months later, and that was it for me. No more travel!!!  But instead of sitting down like a chicken with its wings clipped, I revisit my favourite places through my mind’s eye, time and time again. So here goes……

This is an account of my last journey made in May 1996, just five months before my heart valve replacement.  My itinerary was Auckland, Sydney, Cairns, Gove and Darwin. And I had my sights set on Kakadu and the islands of Bathhurst and Melville, not too far away from Darwin, if you are a bird.

I set off for Cairns after having spent a week in Sydney, visiting with my daughter and my old friends.   I flew north with Ansett, now defunct. And what a good company they were to fly with!!  The flight took three hours and I arrived in Cairns around midday.  I had booked into a place I had found in one of the tourist guide books.

Cairns is a small modern city, with lots of flash hotels, apartments and rooming houses of all kinds.  The place I stayed in was called Costa Bianca and I had a very nice upstairs apartment, with a lovely view over the water –when the tide was in!! I was amazed  to see huge expanses of mud when the tide went out, but later learned that the government had dredged out what they laughingly called a “river”, really a mangrove creek,  to accommodate naval patrol boats. They had just dumped all the mud and rubbish offshore from the esplanade waterfront. I couldn’t believe it.  I got up early every day and saw the sun rise over the coconut palms. The apartment garden also had a lovely big old swimming pool, which I put to good use every day.

To be continued…….

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

Benjamin Franklin

The Computer Blues

“When my computer is good, it is very, very good, but, when it is bad, it is horrid”...

And that’s me for today, anyway. You never know when you are going to open the screen, only to find parts of it have died, or it refuses point blank to let you access your emails.  Good start to the day, wouldn’t you agree?  Oh well, I have to stop to taking it personally. 

 The trouble is that the wretched thing has become almost my best friend, and I feel upset by its rejection of me.  What has happened?  What could I have done to offend it?  Or have we, me and my buddy computer, become victims of foul play? Are we in the grip of the Techno-Mafia?  Terrible thought.

 

At least, with a few years of trial and error, mostly error, I am a bit more techno-savvy than I used to be.   My frenzies don’t last as long.  I have become more philosophical.  Now, I know it will be fixed, so I shouldn’t drive myself mad with trying this and that.  Although, by trying this and that, I sometimes manage to fix the problem.  I have a couple of alternate strategies, which I bring into play, but if nothing works, what the hell, that’s it for today.  I’m off!!!

“The noble-minded have nine states of mind: for eyes, bright; for ears, penetrating; for countenance; cordial; for demeanor, humble; for words, trustworthy; for service, reverent; for doubt, questioning; for anger circumspect; and for facing a chance to profit, moral.”
― Confucius, The Analects

On Being an Otaran….

I’ll bet you don’t know what an Otaran is, do you?

Well, fast forward from Shorncliffe 1940’s to New Zealand some 30 years later.  I came to Auckland in the early 1970s, and I found a good job.  However, I was finally coming to grips with my latent talent of being in business for myself. I always had the urge to do so, and made several disastrous attempts here and there, in Australia.  However, never having had any instructions on how to make money, and being so damned poor, it just never clicked, and I was always a worker, no money, no hope of other than a hand-to-mouth existence and a penniless old age. Not that there is anything wrong in being a worker. Hey, that is how I survived until my early 50’s.    As I work on the ancestry part of my family research, I have found that the families of my maternal grandfather  and also my paternal grandmother, had been quite well off, so the genetic code was imbedded, but the DNA hadn’t kicked in.

After a year or so, I gave up my good job, crazy me, and started off on my new adventure of becoming self employed.  There are some very interesting  parts of this adventure, it isn’t just a one shot wonder. But more on that later.

Getting back to becoming an Otaran.  Otara, in South Auckland, was, in those days, mostly Maori and Polynesian families.  Somewhere along the line, a good idea was hatched to start a proper market in the shopping centre carpark on Saturday mornings, 5am until 12.  And I thought that this would be a good opportunity for me to start a small business.  Little money, no knowledge, but how did I know that. Boots and all, that’s me. As Saturday and Sunday trading were mostly banned in those days, this market, being the only one of its kind in Auckland, filled a really pressing need in the community. Farmers would truck in their produce, wheeler dealers would bring in whatever they could find, little clothing manufacturers turned out cheap clothes and the crowds were astonishing. I made a deal with a pottery manufacturer and sold his factory seconds. My husband sold trinkets and jewellery. We lived like a band of gypsies, except we had our nice Ponsonby house, not a horse drawn caravan.  Other people in the family thought we must be extremely poor, being market people and all.   How wrong they were!

My brother-in-law was particularly miffed when I told his wealthy, upright, uptight friends at the club he had joined, that I was an Otaran.  And so I had to explain in detail what that was!! So there, you toffy nosed lot , who only think of becoming share traders, or horse traders, or house traders. I will bet I made more money, had more time and fun, and was happier than you

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.     -- Charles R. Swindoll

March, March, March Along the Highway.

Tiny soldier crabs, in smart blue and white uniforms…..

Funny how the memories of Shorncliffe are bringing back  glimpses  of such small things. When the tide went out, and the sandbanks stretched out for miles, there would suddenly be a stirring in the sand and these tiny crabs would emerge. To me, as a child, it seemed there were like millions and billions, covering every inch of the sand, wearing their tiny blue crab shells like a badge of honour and  waving their weapons,  white claws, threateningly.  They broke formation, when I approached them, closing around my feet when I wasn’t  looking .I seem to remember that they had a sharp little bite, too, but they weren’t after my blood, they were just doing their drilling and I was Gulliver standing in their midst,  disrupting their Army manoeuvres. 

 A funny moment has surfaced in this memory bubble.  Soldier crabs were not a lot of use as fishing bait. They were too crunchy. Also they were too small to cook and eat, but the seagulls seemed to enjoy them. One day, as I was idly scouting around in the pools, I spied an American sailor with his girl on his arm, meandering romantically along the cliff path.

Always one to spot an opportunity, I quickly grabbed an old small tin, and filled it with complaining and struggling soldier crabs.  I casually sauntered up to the young sailor, and suggested he might like to try his hand at fishing.  Kind young man, he pulled a shilling (about 10 cents) from his pocket. I don’t really think fishing was on his mind that day

 He and his girl went on their way, and I went back to beach combing, feeling a whole lot richer.