Buoys that bite

For a few days I am back out on the sea, but not on our own boat and not sailing either. The Scottish Series is a race event for sailing boats of all sizes which has been hosted locally for many years. Entries can run into hundreds of boats so our marina becomes packed out for the duration - 4 days - and the village full of sailors doing what sailors do whilst not sailing, making a lot of noise and having a good time.

An event like this needs support boats which can move around quickly, lay out the race buoys and move them again if there is a sudden change in wind direction. I am signed up as a volunteer and, given my experience on boats, out on the water is where I can be most useful so I find myself riding around on a large rigid inflatable boat, big enough to carry three or four enormous inflatable orange race buoys. Our job is to follow instructions from the race officer who is located on a yacht at the race start line and once the buoys are laid we can sit back and watch the fun. Yacht racing is a serious business, the skippers and crews all wanting to end up on the winners' podium at the finish so there are close encounters with lots of shouting, all within the rules, of course.

One interesting challenge for us was using for the first time some autonomous racing buoys. These strange things have propellors underneath driven by small electric motors, making them self propelled. They can manoeuvre themselves at a speed of about five knots under remote guidance or alternatively they can hold themselves in one position on the sea using electronic satellite navigation. Using these things is something of a game changer for yacht racing, particularly in Scotland where the lochs can be hundreds of metres deep. Instead of having to anchor the buoys to the bottom using lengths of chain and masses of rope, the new gadgets are simply carried or towed until somewhere close to where they are needed then tossed overboard. Their internal electronics takes care of the rest, making the job of laying the course buoys much less labour intensive. At the end of the day though, recovering them and getting them back onto a boat which is bouncing about in a lumpy sea did turn out to be something of a challenge.

For the Scottish Series, in our boat we were using the smaller of two types of these automated buoys which had short fold down legs with propellors at the bottom. Before recovering them from the water the legs had to be folded up so they lay alongside the control box and would not risk getting damaged. In addition the motors should be switched off manually. Having pulled the boat alongside we would have to reach down by leaning over the side in an almost inverted position, something that required a certain athleticism, particularly when the waves were tossing the boat about in an open sea. As it turned out the only way to guarantee the buoys were switched off was to open up the waterproof lid and activate a switch inside, where all the electronics were housed, so it made sense to bring the thing onto the boat first to avoid the risk of water getting in. Unfortunately for one of my fingers, this proved to be a very unsafe thing to do. The small propellors spin very fast and are quite capable of inflicting injury, so I discovered, after one had inflicted a deep cut at the end of my middle finger.

My four consecutive days bobbing about at sea thus came to a sudden end since the cut finger now needed treatment which meant I had to go ashore. I was speedily driven back to the harbour using every one of the 150 horses powering the engine on our boat, itself quite an experience, and I am grateful to all those who assisted in this.

At the time of writing this I am glad to say that my body has healed up and everything is back in working order again.

Polly the tunnel

If you're thinking parrots at this point then prepare for disappointment.

Having demolished the crumbling greenhouse that came with the house when we moved in, our intention was always to make use of the solid concrete base on which it had stood. So having previous experience of one particular brand of polytunnel in our previous garden it was not a difficult decision for us to spend a bit of money on another one from the same stable. These things are well made and designed to be anchored down to the ground to enable them to survive most storms.

They are delivered as a series of tightly wrapped packages, some containing steel and aluminium parts and others with the wooden pieces which are partly precut to length. All this comes together with thirty eight pages of instructions. Just reading these took a good few hours so we decided to miss out on the real entertainment - watching hours of self help videos of people building polytunnels.

With a concrete base we first had to mark then drill holes for the anchor bolts before erecting the basic frame, this being a day's work on its own. Then the following day the rain started and it didn't stop for two days so we set about fashioning the doors and their supporting frames within the confines of our conservatory.

A brief lull saw us outside again drilling more holes and trying to make sure the door will actually fit into the door frames until again this was called off when the rain started. Some of the metal pieces require pre-bending to make them fit, this needing strong fingers and thumbs which, by the end of the day, are suffering and sore. At this point in the construction we just have a tunnel, no poly.

With these initial stages done it was time for the plastic bit to go on (page thirty in the manual). This comes with a rash of health warnings about picking a dry day with no wind so we checked the forecast and immediately spotted the storm warnings, thunderous rain showers with gale force winds, that were about to hit the south west of England. By contrast, however, Scotland was about to get a mini heatwave (sorry England) with negligible wind so we plan an early start the following day.

The enormous sheet of polythene arrives folded into one lump which has to be spread out so it can be pulled over the roof of the frame then stretched taught and clamped into position. At any point a strong gust of wind might carry it away but with the two of us working we soon had it fastened down with the skin tightened to the point where tapping the sides sounded like a drum, a very satisfying sound.

Finishing the job off we are very pleased with what we have achieved. It took a lot of physical effort but as soon as we step inside we can feel the heat being trapped in there. We have seeds and pots on standby waiting to go into action; tomatoes, courgettes, beans, cauliflower, to name but a few, and we look forward to watching their accelerated growth. Just one useful addition is needed inside - some staging to support the trays of tiny seedlings. For this we took delight in recycling various bits of wood which we had retained after demolishing the cupboards inside the house some months away and then used some of the many nails and screws which also came with the house. The result is solid, maybe not pretty, but functional. 

Seedlings are on sale almost everywhere locally just now so an expedition to the shops proved very fruitful.

Then we were offered another batch of tomato seedlings by a kind neighbour so suddenly we are growing at all levels. It feels good when things turn out this way.

Scotland warms up

Having spent the previous week looking from across the world at the weather forecasts for the west of Scotland and preparing ourselves mentally for a twenty degree temperature drop, within a week of arriving home the sun was out and was bringing with it a surprising amount of warmth. And so much had changed. Leaves were growing on trees where previously there were just buds, flowers had emerged on the gorse bushes and the bumble bees were busily searching for nesting spots in the long grass. Each day we looked out at something new, some just emerged shoots or the dandelions bursting into flower, until the day eventually came when it was warm enough to sit outside and take in everything with all our senses. So where do we end up? At the pond, of course.

The water level was high and the garden surrounding it was sodden (hardly surprising as we'd just missed a named storm, Kathleen). But was there life in the pond? Had Spring really arrived?

At first we could see nothing rippling the surface. Then after a few days there it was, movement, first one then more, pond skaters darting around. The weather improved again and several days later we were out there on our pond side seat (a pretty essential garden feature) and there was more; small nymph like beings swimming below the surface and a black beetle or two. Then it happened! A glimpse of movement whizzing across the bottom, tail flapping, then disappearing into the weeds. We have a newt, quite small but looking very relaxed. I have this mental picture of his mum wandering about, maybe getting bored with life on our neighbour's pond two gardens away, or perhaps she trundled down from the burn beyond our back fence, looking for excitement, and suddenly she discovers our little pond.

The water tastes sweet, there are insect larvae to chase, rocks to sunbathe on so she thinks:

'D'you know what, I think I'll lay some eggs here'.

Newts in our pond (we call this one Nigel) know they have humans looking after them as they can see us up on our pond seating and they will get no hassle from frogs or toads as they have yet to find their way here.

In a run of warm dry weather we find ourselves sitting by the pond making new discoveries. One day a water boatman rows himself around just under the surface using his arms like oars and then we spot a greater bee fly on the pond side vegetation. These things mimic bees but have very long noses which gives them away.

Soon they'll all be watching us erect the new polytunnel which replaces our rather broken greenhouse which we dismantled just before it collapsed or blew away in a gust of wind. It's all part of the grand plan, where we have an area of the garden to grow edible things and the rest is as wild as it wants to be. We haven't used a lawnmower since we moved in - why would you - and each day we are increasingly aware of what we can expect from the garden and which bits we have no desire to cultivate so we'll just let things grow. Throughout most of the garden we like to see what will grow without any intervention... and in many places this is moss, great luxuriant blankets of the stuff, soft underfoot (although we try not to walk on it too much) and always changing colour with the seasons. We read with horror about chemicals recommended for eliminating moss from the garden so the grass can grow. Such behaviour is alien to us.

The first few weeks back home after our holiday has taught us something important, something surprising, for which we were unprepared. Suddenly we look out of our living room window at the view below us and we're seeing it with new eyes. We're completely blown away by the beauty of the land we call home and we simply cannot get enough of it. Each day the view changes and excites us once again.

Australia - Brisbane

First impressions... it's an alien world. Well most cities are, to us, but this one is unlike any other city we have ever visited.

Seen from a high viewpoint, the clump of tall buildings appear to occupy quite a small area. Once down at street level however the real city emerges.

First of all it is modern. This is a place that has grown from almost nothing in barely a single lifetime. There is little that is more than one hundred years old; none of the buildings, the infrastructure, the roads, everything visible is freshly made.

There are concrete towers and steel bridges everywhere you look and this sense of fresh youthfulness seems to be mirrored in the age of the people visiting or living there. If there is an older population do they feel, like us, somewhat out of their comfort zone?

Then there's this, a picture taken from the same spot as the one above but looking in another direction. This is a bathing area right in the centre of the city, completely free for anyone to use, with lifeguards and showers thrown in. Just strip off down to your swimmers and wade in. Although there's clearly an emphasis on providing this facility for children, there is nothing preventing anyone of any age from spending all day splashing about there, all at the expense of the city.

Of course the Brisbane climate does have a lot to do with this. We were there coming into autumn but it was at least 27°C every day. This explains the city dress code, shorts and T-shirt for the blokes and as much skin as possible being exposed by many of the female gender, far more than we have ever encountered before. Of course much of this skin, on both genders, was darkened with tattoos, but this is not something unique to Brisbane, just more visible.

On our first day in the city we visited a 'wildlife park', which we might refer to as a zoo. 

Whilst this opportunity to observe Australia's animals was interesting, seeing so many in cages was unsettling for us all. Just one area, a large field, was home to an uncaged population of kangaroos and wallabies, these animals clearly having become acclimatised to putting up with humans in close proximity, although perhaps not enjoying it. For us this was followed by an afternoon dip in the sea and later a meal out in the city eating some excellent Greek food.

 

On our second afternoon in the city we hopped on a ferry for a sightseeing tour along the Brisbane river.

Once again we were amazed to discover that this too was free; you can cruise up and down all day if you want.

Of course Brisbane does provide plenty of opportunity to spend money should you be tempted. Most of the streets near where we were staying were lined with shops and restaurants, clearly catering for tourists and holidaymakers. Walking about though you had to stay alert, ready for the electric scooter whizzing up behind you. These things were everywhere, available for hire, and parked randomly on the pavements. Just use the app on your phone to wake one up, jump on and zoom off along the pavement or into the road. How on earth there aren't more casualties is mystifying but then this is just the perspective of someone who has been around more years than most Brisbane-ites.

Oh, one last positive thing. The Brisbane graffiti is better than anything we've seen before.

Finally the Uber cab to the airport brought our holiday to a conclusion. The long and painful journey around the globe in a plane awaited us, the in-flight movies doing little to take the mind off the hours of sitting still with the roar of the engines in our ears.

Australia - adventures

Ok so perhaps the word 'adventure' is a little too dramatic. We really didn't fly all this way to throw ourselves into anything too exciting or in any way dangerous. The aim was simply to visit and spend time with Kate's brother and his wife who volunteered their home to accommodate us and made us feel very welcome. We were accompanied, however, by our son Ben and his wife Naomi and they are both younger and more adventurous than us. Sitting on the stoop watching the birds come for their morning feed was never going to be enough for them.

A walk in the 'bush' kept them content for a short while, followed by a dip in our host's pool.

A couple of trips to Rainbow Beach to swim in the sea was quite an experience for us all too, the waves being a little too big for any actual swimming and it was really just about being bashed around.

The cooling off in a creek on the way back was most welcome though, surprisingly cool despite the heat of the day.

Our hosts also put some bikes at our disposal, one of which was electric, although ancient and heavy enough to be a serious health risk and quite difficult to manoeuvre around tight corners.

Then there was a bit of dolphin feeding at Tin Can Bay where these animals are so used to us that they come to the same place every day for breakfast.

These might have qualified as adventures for us but for our younger family they wanted more, much more. So first of all they booked us all on a coach tour to Fraser Island. 

This proved to be quite an adventure since the island (known now by its original name, K'gari, where the 'K' is silent) has no actual roads. From the ferry the ruggedly constructed bus took us along the beach before heading inland along rutted sandy tracks which bounced us all over the place, to visit a swimming lake and to show us the dense sub-tropical rainforest that covers the island.

We'd hardly started along the beach when we started seeing dingos, an animal the island hosts a considerable number of. These creatures are not to be messed with nor enticed with food and they will chase anything that runs away from them, apparently. There are strict rules about not feeding them and although we felt quite safe up in our four-wheel drive bus one has to wonder about the other holiday-makers making use of their rather smaller four-wheel drive 'utes' to visit the island and even camping out on the beach itself.

One of the main points of interest on the tour was the wreck of the Scottish built ship 'Maheno' towards the north end of the island

and then another treat for us tourists was when one of our coach drivers pulled out his didgeridoo and started playing, the sound carrying right through the dense forest.

With no time to recover from our island adventure, the following day saw us waving farewell to our younger family who had booked a two day canoeing trip in the Everglades, an area of rainforest not far from where we were staying.

This involved kayaking into the wilderness for a whole day, an overnight camp in a tent -hardly luxury - then paddling back the following day. Apparently there was wildlife a plenty but fortunately no encounters with large biting things.

For us elders, of course, the entire holiday was something of an adventure, even the final few days before our flight home which we spent in Brisbane, on which more is coming soon.

Australia - the language

Just to be clear, unless you're an Australian the word 'creek' is the noise made by walking on a loose floorboard and the word for water running off a hill is a 'stream' or if you're in Scotland, a 'burn'. Using the word 'thongs' to describe a pair of flip-flops could lead to an embarrassing misunderstanding but 'gummies' referring to waterproof rubber boots does seem to make some sense. All these are examples of differences that have crept into everyday use in Australia.

None of which explains how the pedestrian lights in Maryborough transformed into the Mary Poppins 'brolly' down or 'brolly' up symbols nor indeed why this 'sheila' (beautifully dressed lady) was so willing to have her picture taken. (This town is where P L Travers, author of the Mary Poppins novels, was born.) 

Maryborough also gave us an iron pig, 

a close encounter with a train, 

a spectacular 'dunny'...

...and some incredibly old trees.

What more could you ask for.

On our visit there we were blessed with a sighting of a pair of 'brumbies' (wild horses) grazing at the side of the road 

then on our return through Poona we finally got to see what any visit to Australia would not be complete without. (It turned out Poona is pretty much overrun with 'roos'.)

On one of our trips out we visited an 'op' shop, something we might have called a charity shop, and on the drive there we kept seeing yellow road signs with the word 'CREST' on them. At first we thought this was an instruction to hold outspread fingers to the head to imitate the crested cockatoo we'd seen earlier but eventually we realised that it was the equivalent of the 'Hidden Dip' sign used on UK roads. So just a different way of looking at the same thing. Thankfully these subtle changes to the language were easy for us 'pommies' to understand and we didn't make complete fools of ourselves during our time in 'Straya'.

Australia - impressions

What we enjoy and welcome most about foreign travel are the differences, either in the environment itself, the landscape and the man-made structures, or else in the way people have reacted to those differences which over time have given rise to different behaviours and cultures. Today, most of those who live in Australia come from a heritage which is traceable to somewhere else, mostly the UK, which explains why the language and the culture is basically familiar to us. Yet there are things that are notably distinct, behavioural changes, which have proliferated over time and spread to all those who today call themselves Australian.

[What follows here is likely to be seen as biased, not least because we are visiting only a small part of this vast country.]

You don't have to spend long driving here to notice how many cars fit what we assume to be the Australian psyche, something centred around a scenario where as soon as you drive out of town you're in the 'outback', a world of dirt roads and swollen streams where the risk of wildlife jumping out in front of you requires solid lumps of iron known as 'bull bars' attached to the front of your vehicle to bump it aside. It seems that the most common private car is the 'ute', a 4-wheel drive truck equipped with enormous tyres and ideally a snorkel to enable it to cope with driving through deep water. These vehicles are everywhere, their powerful, roaring engines feeding the myth which everyone seems to believe. Because for most Australians it surely is a myth. The dirt roads were paved over years ago and the swollen streams are protected by warning signs as you pass over the bridges. Granted there are still places where kangaroos or other wildlife are quite likely to hop across the highway but for most short journeys this would not be a problem. In a modern world where the car is used for shopping, a trip to the beach or maybe going for a meal out, any small car would suffice but this would not fit in with how Australians seem to see their country. For them it is still big and dangerous, a kanga around every corner just waiting to impale itself on the bonnet, so the massive gas-guzzlers are everywhere and the roads, the car parks and the fuel stations are all sized to accommodate them.

Without difficulty we found the ultimate example to illustrate the many essential features of these vehicles: four doors, fat tyres with flared wheel arches, bull bars with an aerial sticking up at the front, twin snorkels, roll bar, twin spare wheels hanging on the back, roof rack with a tent or an awning, tow hitch, rear storage compartment, air conditioning and of course a roaring exhaust system. Missing any of these features and unless you live in an Australian city you'll likely feel socially inadequate, unable to hold your own against those you feel are better equipped than you.

None of this should be surprising really. On our motorway journey south from Scotland to Bristol we were constantly being overtaken by cars zooming past us in the outside lane, the majority of which were large SUVs, a remarkable number of these having personalised number plates. Something very similar drives the need to own such vehicles and to use them in this way. In London they are known as 'Chelsea Tractors'. In Brisbane itself, so it seemed, many of the utes have also been swapped for large SUVs with personalised number plates.

One other thing about foreign travel is that reality doesn't always line up with expectations; this is just the way of the world. When the trip to Australia was first proposed our thinking was that we'd be faced with temperatures well in excess of those we were leaving behind, and in this at least we were not to be disappointed. Along with this we had in mind that it would be very dry, our previous visit some years ago fitting this model and this also being the prevailing image of Australia portrayed to those of us who live on our side of the world.

Reality turned out to be rather different. One of the first wild walks we went on whilst we were staying with Kate's brother in Cooloola Cove took us to this creek. On our initial visit the water was darkly stained with tannins but flowing fairly gently. Two days later the water level was much higher and the fallen tree we had used before to manoeuvre ourselves across had been swept away downstream. Crossing it again was out of the question. Given the amount of rain falling every day from the moment we arrived this was hardly surprising but it turned out that even the locals were bewildered by the unusual rainfall. The ground around the house was saturated well before we arrived and the heavy showers that fell every day during the first weeks of our holiday added to this. Contrast this with the UK where the news is all about, well, the exceptional rainfall. Is something strange happening to our world?

The Australian heat, though, was well up to our expectations. Had we stayed at home we'd have been in six degrees of heat and lighting the stove every evening to keep ourselves cosy. In Oz we had twenty five degrees each day by ten in the morning, rising well above this most afternoons. We became acclimatised, to an extent, but it is difficult to imagine what Ozzy summer temperatures must feel like. Coping with the heat was what we did but it sapped our energy, our skin being permanently damp from perspiration. The nights gave us little relief unless we chose to use the bedroom air conditioning unit but both this and the enormous ceiling fan produced noise which disturbed our sleep. Well, that and the noises from the outside, the crickets and the frogs, plus the occasional ute driving past.

Australia - the wildlife

'Jet-lag' is the term we use to describe the after effects of moving quickly from one time zone to another distant one. It would have had no meaning before long haul flying became a reality but today it is commonplace and there are many ways that this affects our bodies. The physical consequences of being uncomfortably seated for a prolonged period of time whilst being subjected to constant vibration and the occasional shaking caused by air turbulence will inevitably have an effect on us. The body clock alone can take days to readjust but the strange sensations of vibration coming through my feet after landing did take me by surprise. Then after emerging from our first night of sleep with our hosts, ridiculously early (local time) on the first morning, we got our first sight of the garden birds attracted by our host's feeding regime.

It appears that most things flying things here are brightly coloured and since many are unique to Australia the first thing we have to do is learn all their names. The dingo shown here is not (normally) a garden visitor, nor would he be welcome. We saw this one strolling about in a local park as if he owned the place, which in many ways they do. The Aussie magpie is considerably bigger than what we see at home and has a call that is loud enough to be heard across the world.

This particular chap is reasonably tame as a result of being offered food every day and he begins screaming for attention every morning as soon as he sees someone in the house is awake.

Moving on... 

... these fungal beauties caught our eye. They live on trees in the wooded areas near where we were staying, an area known as 'the bush' ('woods' don't exist here). Eucalyptus trees tower over everything else, their white trunks being devoid of bark and carrying strange zigzag marks made by tiny burrowing creatures.

All this in our first week of the holiday during which we explored the area, the beaches and the sand dunes. This was where we met the goanna and the white crab. The gekko, however, spends his days in the house catching flies and spiders whenever he can. Everything in Australia seems to be in one way or another different from what we are used to back home in Scotland. The wildlife, the climate, the cars, the accent, it is all part of the jet-lag adjusting process.