Shooting Stars and Flying Fish: Swapping the boardroom for the seven seas

by Nancy Knudsen

  We still have to get home, and soon we head southwards, the Australian coastline barely a misty ruffle in the distance. Watching it, I can’t help thinking that it wouldn’t take much global warming for most of Australia to disappear underwater. Then I guess we would be left with the island of Uluru, the Snowy Mount – er – Isles and the Great Dividing Archipelago.

  I didn’t remember how green the water is here – and why can’t you see to the bottom? For instance, we anchor in three metres and I can’t see a thing – yet this is ocean water! What on earth, I ask myself, do people do on snorkelling trips?

  We day-sail from anchorage to anchorage, which is pleasant, and the birds – the birds are wonderful – they serenade us every morning and evening. There are high-gliding hawks or kites, cormorants of every description, black and white pelicans (not brown) by the dozen, tiny robins, curlews and, of course, the kookaburra. So much of the world has lost its birds – let us not lose our fish, as then we should surely, just like parts of the Med, lose our birds too.

  But the adrenaline flow is now missing. There’s a marina and a hardware shop around every corner, and a supermarket in every town. Our first drive on a freeway to reach the supermarket is a rude shock – the growl of hundreds of tyres, the mad jockeying for position, the speed. Our habit has been to always observe the rules of the country we visit, so we automatically obey the speed limit here too. The drivers around us are incensed.

  I can’t wait to get back to the soft slushing and lapping noises of an anchorage. I can’t help remembering walking or riding our bikes to the local shops, the nearness of everything, the conviviality of the coastal walking paths, with their walkers, flower-behind-ear, saying ‘hello’ to each other and us in the afternoon sunshine.

  I had also forgotten how many scary things there are in Australia. Our international cruising friends hadn’t, though. After sailing to country after country where the scariest thing is a maddened rooster running wild, they are wary of this vast flat land. Sailing across the Pacific, as we drew closer and closer to the shores of Australia – and they did their obligatory reading to prepare themselves for a new country – the questions became more numerous:

  ‘What about crocodiles? We see so many surfing pictures, but how can people go surfing with all the crocodiles?’

  ‘So many snakes – how can the children be let out to play?’

  ‘What about the spiders? I won’t be able to sleep!’

  ‘What about sharks? Looks like we shouldn’t swim at all!’

  ‘I read that Australia has dengue fever, Ross River fever and malaria.’

  ‘How big is a cane toad?’

  ‘Are the small kangaroos dangerous too?’

  We’d also forgotten how many signs there are, and how many rules. Speed rules on the water, rules about where you can anchor, where you can swim, millions of road rules. Rules about the rubbish, rules about headwear on our bikes, rules about dogs, rules about alcohol, rules about dressing in restaurants and clubs, rules about swimming, all spelled out on officious signs in just one language. Pity the poor visitor who doesn’t speak English. Pedestrian crossings are wonderful though – cars actually screech to a stop and let you pass.

  And ahhhh, the beaches . . . the reality lives up to the recollection. The eye-squinting glare, the unruly rush of the surf, the hazy salt-filled air, the bare brown bodies, striding, sleeping, kicking sand. The kids sprawling and running, the bobbing black heads disappearing underwater, reappearing, leaping, catching a wave. The strutting lifesavers, shining bodies to show off to preening bikini-clad girls. It’s all there under the purest blue dome of a sky, unchanged since I was a child, and I am (again) tearful as I stand staring at my first real Aussie beach.

  Then there’s Dan Murphy. Everyone is talking about Dan Murphy. He’s a big party-thrower, I decide as I listen to the locals’ conversations. ‘We called by Dan Murphy’s, of course.’ ‘Oh, we went to Dan Murphy’s last weekend. Terrific wines.’ It takes several days to find out that this is a bottle shop! Five years ago there was no Dan Murphy – what a business success that must have been, I think. It takes several more days to learn that it’s Woolworths in disguise!

  Other things have changed remarkably too. Queensland, that most conservative of Australian states, has both a female premier and a female governor. Even Bundaberg has a female mayor. This strikes me as extraordinary, but I can barely raise any interest when talking to Queenslanders.

  However, gradually, we remember and forget.

  We remember how to be Australian ourselves, and forget how it might appear to others. In various places, we watch the bush turkeys and ibis tramping by, listen to the high-pitched chorus of the cicadas, and when we see the bright scarlets and greens of the rosellas overhead, and the flitting lorikeets, we take them for granted. The gentle olive green of the bush no longer seems dull and lifeless, but becomes soothing and subtle. The Australian accents fade into the backdrop of living, the southerly busters arrive about once a week, and it looks just right when the long flat plains along the coast slither and smudge into the afternoon sunsets.

  Finally, it all comes together to seem, somehow, just like home . . .

  We’ve been drifting down the Australian east coast, very gradually. There’s no pressure for us to get home, and we both seem reluctant to rush. After all, there’s What then? What then? to worry about.

  Finally, though, we can’t put it off any longer. It is a bleak grey morning, cold for this time of year, when we approach the coast. Barrenjoey Lighthouse is appearing and disappearing in the fine scudding rain. It’s not how I imagined our final approach to our home port. (In my mind I had us hurtling down the coast in bright sunshine, me on the bow in shorts and sunhat, a final triumphant arrival into the port we left in similar sunshine five years ago.) The teak of the cockpit is darkly wet, we are in snugs and wet-weather gear. There’s an unfriendly southerly wind.

  There will be no boats out, even though it is a Sunday morning and friends from the yacht club have said they might come to welcome us. It’s just too miserable a morning for anyone to be out, so we think we’ll be alone as we enter our home waters of so-familiar Pittwater. We reassure ourselves that we’ll meet with friends later in the day.

  I notice one boat behind Lion Island, and a motor boat in the distance under Barrenjoey. The radio spits and crackles. ‘Blackwattle, Blackwattle, this is Alfreds 1, go to Channel 77.’

  ‘Alfreds 1, this is Blackwattle, going up.’ Ted’s voice is tremulous – this is one of our yacht club’s official boats.

  ‘Blackwattle, Alfreds 1, we’re here to welcome you home. Are you intending to go inshore and then tack to port up Pittwater, over?’

  ‘Yes. Over,’ says Ted, suddenly monosyllabic. We can see now that the motor boat is the club boat, decked in bunting, becoming clearer in the bad light.

  ‘Then allow us to lead you up Pittwater, and there are several boats here to welcome you as well, over.’

  ‘Er, yes, okay. Over.’ Ted is lost for words.

  And soon white sails start appearing round Barrenjoey Headland, one, two, three, and the sailing boat behind Lion Island turns towards us too. There are horns blaring now, we can’t tell from where.

  Soon we can read familiar names. ‘Ted, look, it’s Windsong – Breakaway is over there!’ There are also names we don’t know. ‘Ocean Breeze? Who’s Ocean Breeze?’

  The skipper calls out and, as if on cue, we hear his shouting against the noise of the wind. ‘I’m the commodore – c-o-mm-o-d-ore!’

  The number of boats increase. Finally we can count seventeen boats, including two powerboats around us near and far. On one of the powerboats – Ross and Jenny Scobles’ Passport – I can see my daughter, waving and filming, waving and filming. No Simon. He’s in Los Angeles right now.

  It’s a beat to get up the long waterway of Pittwater. We ta
ck this way and that, back and forth, as if we were in a race. This is ridiculous, we are used to gybing every other day, not every two minutes! I reach for the key to turn the engine on!

  But, as if reading my thoughts, the radio comes to life again: ‘Blackwattle, this is Alfreds 1 – the finish line is laid for you opposite the club, but if you don’t sail across the line, you’ll have to go round again.’ Round again? Round again? It takes a millisecond to sink in – he means round the world again.

  So we giggle a little and tack back and forth up the ever-narrowing waterway. The sailing boats follow us, coming nearer sometimes – we wave at each other frantically – and then drifting away . . . Some are familiar faces, some we don’t know at all. We’re no longer cold, what with all the tacking, and our auto-helm works overtime doing ninety-degree turns while we handle the winches. The sun is trying to shine as we pass through flocks of tiny sailboats out for their Sunday-morning races.

  Then we pass a line between the club and Alfreds 1, the ‘finish boat’, and there’s a blare of horns to tell us that our race is over. Now it’s sails down for the moment that we’ve been anticipating for months. We have tied all our courtesy flags – the ones we can find, anyway – from the countries we have visited in our circumnavigation, and Ted hoists them up the forestay as we make our final turn to berth at the T Head of our home yacht club, the Royal Prince Alfred at Newport in Sydney.

  There are many hands, attached to familiar bodies, there to take our lines. Someone – Ann Asker – puts a glass of wine into my hand, and half an hour later, after hugs and kisses all round, we repair to the club for a sausage sizzle. Speeches by commodores and ex-commodores and Ted pass by in a daze, but when it’s my turn, I find it hard to speak through the tears.

  28. Through the Looking Glass

  The awakening

  So we are home, but cannot find our home. We feel so much love for friends and family, but I now feel like an outsider. People we meet think they are meeting the same people that they farewelled five years before as we are welcomed back into our previous niche. Dinner conversations are about the horror of Sydney traffic, real-estate prices, parochial party politics, the latest car models, the state of the economy, holidays they are planning or took last month. They also talk about movies we haven’t seen, new books we haven’t read, wine we haven’t tasted. There’s a faint mist of ambition and acquisition and competitiveness floating in the air above dinner tables. I learn to stay quiet, happiest back on the boat. Have I become a hermit?

  For a time we do stay on Blackwattle. We are a threesome and she is part of who we are. When friends ask, ‘What are you going to do now?’ we smile gamely. Ted says, ‘Sail to Thailand.’ But now I know. I smile and shake my head sadly. I know he is tired – not of sailing, but of maintenance, that never-ending chore that architects were not bred for. It occurs to me that the long crossing between the Galapagos and the Marquesas, when all his hard work still left us struggling to make the next port, really broke Ted’s heart. We share these thoughts, travel back to Turkey to enjoy all over again our life there in the flat we haven’t seen for two years, and the friends we have made, and the warm honey of our adopted society, then home to Australia again – four times in the first year. We meant only to go sailing – we didn’t set out to reinvent ourselves. Now we find we have gone through the looking glass, and there is no way back.

  I cannot forget the greater beauty that I found in simpler societies, the caring, the gentleness, the feeling of belonging and wholeness. What have we lost in our sophisticated society? Yes, there are good answers: better health, longer lives, more comfort – we are arguably the most spoilt generation ever to live on this earth. But why don’t I see happiness written on the faces around me?

  The boat is there, waiting.

  But, strangely, I find I have little interest in cruising in the closed quarters that gave me such euphoric pleasure when I first discovered sailing. I find it too painful to be so close, yet not to be out there on my beloved ocean, with the shooting stars and flying fish, and the moon to myself and the squalls that follow to speed me on my way.

  In the joy of familiarity born of more than half a century of living, I know that Australia will always be my home, but, like many before me, I have discovered the joy of a much simpler life. We know we will sell our Blackwattle Bay apartment, neither of us has any wish to return to that environment – we have been too spoiled by our brush with a life lived close to the wondrous natural world. In order to have somewhere to sleep on land, we buy a funny old campervan, instead of a car, prolonging our uncertainty ‘just until we decide’, we tell ourselves.

  One day, as we are leaving our yacht club, we stop to say hello to an old friend.

  ‘Well,’ she says, looking our funny old campervan up and down, ‘I guess seeing you have a flat in Istanbul, you don’t have to impress anyone with your car.’

  Ted and I talk, and we know there is no way back to the lives that we led before in our home city of Sydney.

  My reveries come by themselves, unheralded, the wild and the commonplace together, sharing my dreaming days. When I walk the streets, watch the roaring traffic, I think of the fuel pumped into the atmosphere. When I look up at the city blocks, all air-conditioned, I think of the energy being used. When I look at the blank faces in the street and in the trains, I see the smiling faces of Eritrea. When I hear in conversation the rush, the competitiveness, the materialism that we have all grown to know and accept, I see the old men of Turkey, sitting in the sunny streets, watching over their grandchildren. When I see the blue suits in Bond Street, I remember the easy culture of corruption and acquisitiveness I once took for granted. I know that Ted shares these thoughts.

  There’s a noise and I come out of my reverie. It’s Ted talking as he scrubs the seagull poop from the deck, where they had built a nest during our latest visit to Istanbul. It’s a glad day in Pittwater. Fairy penguins are around the boat, mewing and flapping. The occasional cormorant pops from the water, head wagging, and disappears. White cockatoos screech in the foreshore trees.

  ‘What? Did you say something?’

  Sigh. ‘You never listen. I said that two or three horses would be about right.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘On the farm.’

  ‘Which farm?’

  ‘The one I was talking about.’

  ‘You weren’t talking about a farm.’

  ‘I was – remember? When I was on the bow and you asked me if there was anything I wanted.’

  ‘Six months ago in the middle of the Pacific? Coming into the Marquesas?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ He’s walking down the deck now, stepping into the cockpit.

  ‘A farm? You’ve got to be kidding. A farm? You don’t know anything about farms.’

  ‘Yes I do – my father was a bank manager.’

  ‘A who? What?’

  ‘Yup, they used to transfer bank managers all over the place in the country, so you pick up quite a bit.’ He’s reaching for the newspaper – today’s newspaper.

  I draw a breath, pause for a minute. Clean fresh air? Birds? Rainforest? I can keep writing?

  I say, ‘That’s ridiculous. I can’t ride a horse, and I don’t know anything about farms. I’ve only ever lived in a city. Neither of us know anything about farms. We know about cruising, not farms.’

  ‘We didn’t know a thing about cruising when we started. Look, here’s one advertised in Tasmania.’ Now he’s pushing a real-estate advertisement in front of my face. ‘You told me you always wanted to ride a horse and never got the chance.’

  A horse? On our bicycles again? A wide sky? A simple village? Like . . . like the ones we’ve loved?

  I don’t look at the newspaper, I look at Ted. ‘Tasmania! I’m a warm-weather girl, remember? I’m not going to Tasmania!’

  Something has slippe
d already. We are now arguing about where the farm should be.

  But that’s another story.

  Acknowledgements

  The writing of this book has been like many sailing voyages: begun with boundless enthusiasm and ending with quiet exhilaration. During its passage there were emotional storms, periods when I despaired of surviving the distance. There were also times when the sun shone, the wind behind me blew steadily, and I knew my way.

  The strongest winds were those from the many who helped bring the book to fruition. I acknowledge gratefully the Australian Society of Authors for the mentorship they awarded me. This was the first small sign that what I wrote might have some interest outside my family and friends. Then there is my mentor, Diana Giese, whose never-flagging enthusiasm and friendship buoyed me when the passage seemed too hard and too stormy. She was also responsible for the arrival of agent Gaby Naher into my life. That was one of the best days, and I am so thankful to Gaby for her keenly perceptive guidance. Finally, I want to thank the team at Allen & Unwin for having sufficient belief in the book to even want to publish it at all! An extra-special thanks to Louise Thurtell, Ali Lavau, Ann Lennox and Lauren Finger, without whom it would have been a much less-finished piece.

  I will appreciate forever the input of my sailing guru, Johnnie Keown, who tried to teach me not only how to sail, but the value of that higher skill of seamanship, and John Egan and The Executive Connection (TEC) for teaching me that it’s okay have personal dreams as well as business goals.

  The other group of people without whom the book could not have been possible are the wonderful group of long-range cruising sailors with whom Ted and I shared waters. I am haunted by the fear that I might have left out someone important, so I thank you too and ask here that you will forgive me. Thank you to: Terry and Elaine from Virgo’s Child, Judith and Harry from Vahana, Robin and Suzy from True Blue, Jay and Carol from Gandalf, Pete and Chris from Chatti, Karl and Sandy from Fantasy1, Christa and Martin from Meitli, Tony on Checkmate, Mike and Jos, Pippa and Justine from Mary Constance, Bart, Dorothy, Thibaut and Olivier from Bauvier, Steve and Annamie from Wakalele, Tom and Dee from Axe Calibre, Bill from Saltair, Bill and Eleanor from Time Out, Tim from Libelle, Bill and Lisa from Apollo, Gay and Pete from Giselle, Larry and Ken from Julia, and, of special mention, the inimitable Bob from Tasneem and the beautiful Guido.