You remember Pete and Martina from Havachat whom we met in Fulanga Island, Fiji don’t you? Well Pete came and kindly plucked us from the station and we drove directly to an informal restaurant where the rest of the Maslen family who were in town, that included Martina and Katy were lunching with an Israeli cruising couple who had just thrown in the anchor having sold their boat and were about to fly home imminently.
Pete and Martina have four children, the oldest, Ben is a post grad marine biologist and is living and working in Sydney and Kate, who lives at home works at the QWB where we met the South African couple and the hockey ladies a few days before. Jack and Lisa, the youngest are both away travelling for a few months and Martina hangs on their calls and texts from afar to know they are safe. They are due home at the end of January.
Young Eva who has been living with them for six months enjoys her sports and was suitably clad for a yoga session when we arrived.
The next morning a good surf was up and massive coal ships were anchored in the haze on the horizon as we walked from their beachfront home to Eva’s café where she works and had a yummy breakfast before returning to prepare for a swim. Along with the regulars and visitors like us, between the two lifeguard flags in rollers that alarmed my senses. “You have to time it right,” said Katy as she stepped forward to meet the challenge and disappeared through a mountain of water. I can do this I thought and managed to get through a relatively modest water-roller.
The three of them, Rob, Martina and Kate are all much taller than me so they could stand and chat and look nonchalant way further out than short arse me. I splashed about amongst the waves that were choosing who to knock flat next. So my time came and I was rolled and dunked back to the shore gasping and spluttering under the amused gaze of one lifeguard and trying not to re-visit my breakfast. That was it I thought, too old for this, it’s the granny pool for me next time.
Our friends had previously arranged to go to Sydney that evening to see Book of Mormon with Ben and his girlfriend and return next morning so after our swim Martina and I went to a local farmers market of spectacular proportions in a massive warehouse building just round the corner while Rob mended the puncture on one of the bikes. A look around town by bike it would be.
But then fate decided to step in when I misplaced my step from the bike onto what my brain thought would be flat ground, instead the ground sloped and both bike and I landed on our sides on the pavement. I looked up at Rob and he down at me, “Everything alright love?”
“Does it look it?” I asked. Honestly.
I had damaged the side of my foot somehow but decided to see how it developed and if I could cope rather than dash to medical help that might plaster it, tell me to use crutches and worst of all make our future plans over the next month untenable. I didn’t want to know at that stage.
So we freewheeled down the hill away from Bar Beach where the family live and turned right to find Rob’s Osteopath, who poked and prodded and gave him another appointment for two days time. Then on into Newcastle for a looky.
This time we rode around Honeysuckle Prom where we had walked before and found The Grain Store Pub just beyond the old railway station. With our local in Oakham being a pub by the same name we couldn’t miss that opportunity could we! It seemed appropriate to try the Bentspoke Beer as we were on bikes and we accompanied it with some nice crunchy battered chips, didn’t want to be drunk in charge of bikes after all. It was genuinely once a grain store, just like the one in Oakham and is a big friendly place with lots of books and games available for drinkers to pass the time while chatting, very civilised.
To complete our irregular circuit of town we climbed the steep hill that separates Bar Beach from where we were and walked over the Anzac Bridge with its numerous plaques telling of the Australian and New Zealand involvement in both World Wars. Maybe it was the location, high above the rugged coastline with the fabulous views to seaward, but reading those plaques was a very moving experience.
What we hadn’t realised was that to get down to our home at the far end of the bridge were many steps, so Rob with aching back and me with throbbing foot had to ease our bikes down the steps using brakes to avoid any further injuries. It pays to be old and grey and limping sometimes, this really nice young man took one look, “Can I help you with that?” He asked scooping up said bike as if it was a child’s trike and whisking it downwards for me.
We watched an episode of Outlander alone that evening as Eva was out with her friends.
The next morning we decided the local museum needed our attention but found it hard to locate. I asked a lady who had that ‘I know my way around’ look about her and she pointed us in the right direction after we learned she was originally from Newcastle, England and came out just to explore thirty four years ago and stayed, loving the warm climate and laid back outlook on life.
I remember two things about that museum worth mentioning. First a lecture from a friendly lady called Sammi on growing scobys to make Kambucha. If this method of creating a very health giving drink has been going on for thousands of years I wondered how it had skipped my attention! I also wondered what the drink tasted like. Look out Zoonie I will be growing one on you soon, but not in a bucket like the one you see in the picture with the two young boys helping to hold it up.
The one Rob is holding is a few years old. Did you know that scobys can technically live forever? So I might have to leave mine to someone in my will!
The other memorable thing about the museum visit was the part model and part hologram story of the steel industry. The hologram was a man in the control room giving a commentary while an enormous scale model, a quarter the size of the original vat of molten steel, made its way across the room, suspended from the ceiling to be poured into moulds on the other side. Impressive and noisy.
Getting to know the area now we made our way back to Darby Street, the street we needed to take us on level road back to the easy rise up hill to number 2 Bar Beach, the house in the photo and our waiting friends.
Great Whites out there And the two not so Great Whites ashore
“There are thousands of great whites out there,” said Martina as we stood at her kitchen window scanning Bar Beach Bay, looking from headland to headland and as far as the horizon of the Tasman Sea.
“The trouble is with the young ones. When they are in transition from eating fish when they are small, to needing bigger prey like seals as they grow they mistake surfers for seals. The older ones stay further out. Personally they don’t worry me as a swimmer, the first line of defence is the surfers.”
This interesting chat was a prelude to our next swim and the four of us, Rob, Martina, Kate and I walked the short distance across the road and car park to the beach and I was relieved to see the rollers had settled down to an enticing size, so I wouldn’t be swimming in the granny pool amongst the rocks at the bay end we’d be sharing the ocean with great whites.
In fact it was like having a gentle liquid massage in pleasantly warm water. Then came a welcome breakfast, Scandinavian style before Rob went off with Pete and Alexa, his internet slave in the pickup truck and Martina and I walked into town to share some time looking around the art gallery and climbing to the 8th floor of the new and very glassy university to view the city and docks below. I was hobbling a bit with my foot so we didn’t hurry. Just a nice meander back via the boutiques on Darby and my first kombutcha (I might have spelled that slightly wrong and it was delicious) plus a shop for some food at the indoor farmer’s market and liquor store and then home.
The next day, while Rob was wrestling with his osteopath I went in the pickup with Pete to meet his parents and check a storage shed on his old work site. Pete wanted to sell the shed but it needs some repair work doing first. Also we needed to collect picnic chairs from it for the concert that evening.
In the distance we looked across to his old house that he built for the family and is now owned by someone else. I looked back once at the lovely house I once owned in Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight and seeing the way the back garden had been transformed from a wildlife haven into a clinical ‘yuppy’ retreat was painful. Where had all the wildlife gone? How could anyone do that? So I knew how he felt.
With ease Martina phoned some friends and soon we had a group of ten preparing picnics for a gathering on the shore of Lake Macquarie in a little town called Warners. Thunder rumbled in the hills all around us under a leadening sky adding atmosphere to the music and children entertained themselves on roller skates along the broad pathways. It is a regular event and a great way for families and friends to spend a Friday evening. Fortunately the rain held off until the end of the concert and we returned home for another game of Rummy Cub to round off our penultimate day with our friends.
One thing Rob and I really like about NZ and Australia is their outdoor way of life. For our last day, after our early morning swim of course, we started with a drive north as far as Port Stevens lookout to get a preview of where we could bring Zoonie in to anchor, another safe spot as we port hop down the east coast at the end of this year. Boy it was hot and getting hotter as another heat wave hit the country. We skirted more bays on our way down to Havachat and a restful drink aboard. Memories of our wonderful times in Fulanga came flooding back, Mere and Jone and the other village people aboard Havachat after the Sandspit party remember, when we danced around the after deck and into the night.
Birubi Beach was a spectacular backdrop complete with a camel train taking visitors down to the beach for a paddle. Films including Mad Max were made there and there will be more about camels later.
Leaving the car at the house we wandered across the park to the Bowling club for some food. The management have, by using some common sense pricing techniques, brought the ageing club back to life and now it is popular not only for the game but also as an entertainment place for young families and groups to eat and socialise. The food was good and cheap unlike the new bar in town that was the first on our pub crawl that evening. Silly prices at this one sent us to a converted bank around the corner cunningly named Reserve after the bank that lived there before. Then on to what had been the Customs House where there were considerably more cockroaches than clients in this old building.
That is one of the problems with Pete and Martina’s family home. Built in 1970 it now has an extensive colony of cockroaches living underneath and Dean the cockroach man was putting repellent on all the cupboard hinges one morning. From then on we would come across roaches, lying on their backs about to breathe their last. Our friends may demolish this building and build another to their design which will also deal with the bugs, but time will tell, it’s a big decision.
The next morning Pete and Martina stood looking at the grey sky and uninviting sea from their upstairs bedroom window while Rob and I stood at the kitchen window beneath and simultaneously came to the decision that a swim was off for that day, as indeed had most other folk. So after breakfast and ‘goodbyes’ Pete drove us to the station to catch the 8.50 train to Sydney for our connection to Canberra.
It was Sunday, and just like the UK there were line works. So we had to struggle with our bags out of Wyong station to a coach and then back onto the train at Hornsby. Well it stopped at nearly every station and we were on tender hooks as to whether we would make it in time for the midday train we had already booked. There was only one other later that day and it might well be fully booked also.
We stood ready at the doors of the slow train as it slowed in to Circular Quay, 11.56, moved with the human conveyor belt, waited at the lift, raced to the exit, 12.01, scanned for an attendant to tell us which platform, ran to the escalator, 12.05.
We ended up running to the platform and saw the train was still there. Three ladies in grey uniform saw us running and waving and our names were the last to be ticked off their list. Smiling, one said, “Next door turn left.” I have a feeling they waited for us as we left the station seven minutes late, very relieved and grateful, and the steward remarked, while pouring us a welcome coffee, “Just made it then.”