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.