by Susan Duncan
On the opposite side of the square from the bottle shop there's a restaurant and takeaway food bar, post office and convenience store where most of us pick up the newspapers and the milk. During summer, the back deck is crammed with tourists eating hamburgers and drinking coffee. They sit for hours watching ferries come and go, seeing how people cope when they can't drive home in a car. Envying just a little, I like to think, the bare feet and sarongs, the easy familiarity amongst people in a unique place. At the end of the day, Paul, the accidental removalist, is sometimes at Church Point which I soon learn is known locally as The Point, and we talk food until the ferry leaves. The herb debate rages intermittently until we both decide that garlic is probably king.
As the weather warms up, the evening crowd lingers at The Point until the last ferry at 7.25 pm. Sometimes tinnies are tied three deep and there are kids, dogs, youngies and oldies gathered together in chaotic cheer because the twilight is just too damn gorgeous to rush through. Kids strip off to their undies and take running, skinny-legged leaps into the water. Excited, bright-eyed dogs chase sticks or balls. Kids drip water. Dogs shake rain all over you. Everyone's wet. Everyone's feeling fine. It's Rafferty's rules, exuberance is unrestrained and there's a rare kind of freedom. The kind that comes from feeling secure in your environment.
Over the next weeks my spirit soars when I drive around the last bend from Mona Vale to Church Point. Past the old boatsheds, little beaches and mangroves. When the water is high, dinghies bob and weave on their moorings, busily going nowhere. At low tide, they lean in the sand, resting. As I pass them, they signal whether the tide is high or low or somewhere in between. Rubber boots or no rubber boots. There's a constant, reliable simplicity to this physical world. It is paradise but not the lazy, languid, tropical, pina colada sort. The lushness here comes from the musky smell of the sea and early morning mists that leave damp trails in their wake. From evenings when the sun drops behind the hills of Elvina Bay and night fans out under a hailstorm of stars. It comes from sudden squalls with flashes of lightning that fire up the bays, from pounding rain so thick you can't see through it, or hear your own voice.
And when an antarctic wind occasionally races in from the pole, it whips the sea so hard that, for a while, it can't be trusted.
The water taxi cancels services. Tinnies can sink and when the storm tires or moves on, they are raised from their watery rest, bailed out and restored to working order. The moon, whether a sliver or fat and golden, has new significance here, where there are no streetlights. Its pale, silvery glow silently guides late night commuter boats safely around moorings and illuminates dusky bays when the last familiar house light is turned off and it's hard to get your bearings.
Commuter traffic, which means mostly open tinnies, battered and banged up, with outboard engines hanging off the back, beats past my window. Some boats race to The Point, lifting into the air like flying fish, only to come crashing down again. Others chug slowly, enjoying the lull before joining the rushing throngs. Elegant cruising yachts glide past under sail. Cargo boats loaded with building materials churn along. Kids are taught to drive tinnies on their parents' knees, learning early to think for themselves, to make their own decisions. Always a new sight, new action, a new event that engages you. Makes you wonder what is going on. Which in turn helps you to feel part of a bigger picture.
But friends are cautionary. At the office, colleagues are full of advice. Nodding their heads, shaking their fingers.
'The novelty will wear off.'
'Maybe.'
But you have to have a go, don't you? Change is what you make of it, isn't it? Who said the greatest risk in life is not to take a risk?
It is impossible to resist entertaining prodigiously in the first euphoric flush of this return to Pittwater. I host lunches and dinners outside on the deck. When it's too hot to sit in direct sunlight, the umbrellas go up and the marble bedside table is moved to the doorway of the bedroom to be converted to a serving table and bar because it's closer than the kitchen. The tide comes and goes. The wine flows recklessly. Sometimes the wind from the south west plays havoc but we don't slow down. Not even when a rogue gust flips the umbrellas into the water and a guest dives in after them to return wet and triumphant with one in each hand. They dry quickly in the sun. So does the guest.
I want everyone – the naggers and the pessimistic – to see what they're missing by holding safely to their suburban lives. Which is a bit show off-y. But I give in to the impulse. I also want to share the whole, amazing experience of offshore living. It seems selfish to make a secret of this extraordinary environment where each day unfolds with a fresh, exhilarating newness. Where the community becomes a huge, extended family with the bonus that you don't have to tolerate anyone if you don't want to. And they don't have to tolerate you.
Naturally, not everyone agrees I have found nirvana. Lots of friends arrive and feel stranded on the island, made anxious by the giant moat that separates them from their familiar shackles. But it is the sea, or the moat, that gives me the sense of being separated from a pressured world.
Cooking becomes an even greater passion here. Why dredge through traffic to trendy restaurants when you can sit and eat on a sunstruck deck? Why sit straight-backed waiting for the next course when you can doze on a deck chair and follow your own metabolic clock? Why cross your legs tidily under the table when you could be hanging them over the side of the jetty, splashing hot feet in cool water, a glass of wine in your hand? Surrounded by a languid, instead of a rushing, world.
On a good day, when the water is smooth and the tides right, a couple of quacking penguins might cavort in front of us, ducking and diving in a comic performance that brings a smile to even the most harassed city faces. Sometimes, a kookaburra swoops and snatches a chicken fillet from a plate without disturbing the salad. It is a performance so precise we clap and do not begrudge him the food.
In summer, when there is rarely any wind at dawn, the kayakers go out, gliding soundlessly through the water. Some canoes are wooden and sanded and varnished to an elegant toffee glow. Most are multicoloured, vibrant slashes on glassy water. Boats on their moorings sit almost still just before the sun rises, and the light is gentle enough to make even neglected vessels, festooned with grunge, look loved.
When the rain falls heavily, long plastic raincoats, jackets and waterproof overalls, known by sailors as wet weather gear, are hauled off hooks and pulled over working clothes. High heels are carried in shopping bags, briefcases wrapped in garbage bags. Little kids waddle under a bulk of plastic. Under their hoods, faces are crisscrossed with emotion. Gleeful. Glum. Resolute. Martyred. Others walk by with eyes cast downwards, shoulders hunched, dragging reluctant feet, their backpacks drooping.
Why would they want to leave this freedom for a sardine-tinned classroom? No matter what the weather?
In a big wind, tree tops bow and rain blows in horizontal sheets. The water taxis raft up to their houseboat base and hunker down, the door pulled tight when, mostly, it is left wide open. No one goes out unless there's absolutely no choice. There are horror stories, rarely told but never forgotten, that linger in the lore of the area. The huge motor cruiser blindly crunching over a little tinny in the murky twilight and killing the driver. A boat coming home on a moonless night, slamming into a barge moored just that day in its new position – a mother and her months old baby left to fend for themselves. A toddler slipping silently overboard in a fierce storm, his father jumping in to save him and both drowning. The body of the toddler never found.
Like any paradise, you cannot take it too lightly.
We rely on tank water on Scotland Island, which means that if you are not frugal and there's no rain for a long time, you run out. I hate being short of anything, even gherkins, so I install my own, idiosyncratic systems to use as little water as possible and still stay within the boundaries of hygiene.
Showers are three minutes long and there's an eggtimer in the bathroom that rings when the
time is up.
Boys don't use the loo to pee. They go to the far end of the deck around the corner of the house and out of sight from luncheon guests, where they pee in the water. Women may pee in the loo but it's only flushed every five pees unless it's urgent. There are five seashells beside the loo and each person moves one to indicate they've used the loo. When there's five in the flush basket, the next person to pee moves all the shells back to the start basket and the routine begins again. The directions hang on a hook from the window. Some guests never make sense of it. Or just can't bring themselves to leave a loo without flushing it. Once, it would have shocked me.
Clothes washing is done in one big load once a week. All vegetable washing water is recycled to water the pot plants (unbelievably, the Iceberg roses in pots on the deck are thriving in the salt, sun and wind). Dirty dishes are scraped as clean as possible, first with a spatula and then with a paper towel, before being washed up.
Guests get into the swing of it with good humoured energy.
Or they don't bother coming back.
Summer is consuming. There's always a party. A weekend sail. A time to jump in someone's boat to find a secluded little beach for a swim and a picnic. Time for a walk through the national park. Time to simply lie on a deck chair and read a book, falling asleep, usually, before the end of the first page.
Parties spring up out of nowhere – not the budget-breaking city kind where you supply all the wine and food. On Pittwater, parties blow in on the evening breeze when a neighbour comes home with a boatload of freshly caught fish and, as he passes, yells that dinner is at his house. Bring your own booze. Or when you wave from your deck as someone goes by and he turns his tinny in to your dock to say hello and then stays to dinner.
There is no rush, no timetable. Here, it is PT – Pittwater Time – all the time.
In the lead up to Christmas, the island pops with exploding champagne corks. There's the sound of laughter, of people congregating. Smoke rising from barbecues, the spicy smell of sausages cooking. It's cocktail hour on demand. There's always something to celebrate. Even if it's just another sunny day.
Blokes and their dogs suddenly start appearing at the water's edge, throwing sticks, balls, anything to get their pups to swim further and further, faster and faster.
'You in training or something?' I ask different folks from time to time.
'Yeah, mate.'
And because it's said with such wryness, I don't even think to ask what for.
There are dogs all over Pittwater. Big, little, perfectly bred, ill-bred, good-tempered, bad-tempered, long-haired, shorthaired, black, brown, spotty, even striped. Ones that lick you and drop a stick in your lap. Others that don't even raise an eyelid when you accidentally tread on them. They ride the bows of tinnies like magnificent figureheads, they lollop around the piazza as though it's their party and everyone is their new best friend. They are as much a part of life here as the water. If you can't quite remember some fella's name, the penny drops when his dog is described:
'You know Mick?'
'Well . . .'
'He owns the Jack Russell on steroids!'
'Ah, right. Got him!'
It's quite normal to sit down at a dinner party with four or five dogs underfoot. No-one takes a blind bit of notice of them unless they fight or make so much noise we can't hear ourselves speak. Of course not everyone loves dogs but most people tolerate them.
About a month before Christmas, when Marie, my next door neighbour, and her two boys take a twilight swim, the family dog, a desert red kelpie with yellow eyes called Mabo, paddles after a tennis ball as though his life depends on it.
'Mabo in training too?' I ask when I wander onto the deck to say hello, a sarong around my waist, no shoes and a stained old T-shirt.
'Nah. He's too old to race,' Marie says.
'Race?'
'Yeah.'
'What race?'
'The dog race.'
'What dog race?'
Marie turns to look at me, her lovely blue eyes wide with surprise.
'You don't know about the dog race?'
'Nope.'
'Ah well,' she says, wading out of the shallows to join me on the deck, 'it's a rare cultural event here.'
Sensing a deliciously long explanation, I wander inside to open a bottle of white wine and throw some water on the stove for pasta. Her husband is away sailing in some big yacht race somewhere in the world, as he often does, so I know she'll welcome company.
'Every Christmas Eve,' Marie begins, 'we all gather at The Point for the Scotland Island Dog Race. Anyone can enter, he or she just has to pay the entry fee of a long nose bottle of beer and a can of dog food. Winner takes all. The race starts around six o'clock but we usually get there an hour or so earlier for a few drinks. It's a festive kind of time. Just about the whole of Pittwater turns up. You can take a bit of a picnic if you feel like it. Sit by the waterside, wish everyone Merry Christmas.'
'So where do the dogs race to and from?'
'From Scotland Island, just near Bells Wharf, to Church Point.'
'How long has this been going on?'
'Years and years.'
'How's it organised?'
'Well, I wouldn't say it's organised. It sort of falls into place. Like most stuff on Pittwater.'
'What are the rules?' I ask.
'Rules? Well, I don't know about rules. First dog on the beach wins.That's about it.'
When dinner is ready, Marie calls her two boys from the water. It's an evening thick with heat so we're eating outside on the deck with the sun dropping behind the hills of McCarrs Creek, making the bay shoot orange sparks. Mabo, wet and stinky, collapses under the table with a loud grunt and snoozes noisily while we eat spaghetti swizzled in roasted garlic, olive oil, bacon and parmesan. The boys pick out the bacon and leave most of the pasta. They look at the salad as though it's poison.
The toddler falls asleep on Marie's lap, his long eyelashes casting a shadow on his cheeks. Matthew, the elder son, just old enough to be in his first year of school, his hair a drift of cornsilk, goes inside to watch television. It's the first time the television set has been turned on since I moved here. Matthew's legs are long and thin like those of his father, who is always described as Zap, the bloke who ate a dozen eggs for breakfast in the middle of a yacht race during a shocker of a storm.
I push my chair back to clear the dishes and cannot resist running a hand over the downy head of the child sleeping in Marie's lap. He doesn't stir and the night feels as gentle as a baby's breath.
'How do you do it all?' I ask, gathering plates. 'How do you do the schlepping, the boats, the life, and little kids?'
'There's no choice so you don't think about it.'
'Your little bloke's a terror on the jetty, though.'
'Yeah, thinks it's a personal racetrack.'
She laughs, but I've seen her white-faced with fear when he's suddenly dashed along the jetty in a fit of sheer devilment. Seen her grab her bumble-footed, tippy little boy so tight he's yelped.
I have also seen Marie dock and tie her boat in a body-bending gale with her toddler, Oliver, strapped to her back, Matthew ordered to sit still in his life jacket until she gives the word to move. The boat surges, dives, bangs and teeters. The wind is stronger than ten men pulling in the wrong direction. The pontoon churns. Nothing is stable. She braces with legs astride, the kid on her back weighing her down like a sack of potatoes. Then when boat and dock rise in unison, she grabs Matthew's hand and shouts now! They leap. Steady themselves for a moment on the pontoon. Then, heads bent against the wind, clothes swaddling their limbs, they make their way along the jetty to the shore. It is a terrifying but regular event, one that young mothers all over Pittwater think of little note.
'Ever get you down? Wear you out?'
'Nah. Love it. Kids grow up fast here, but the right way. They learn about swimming, fishing, boats and exploring before shopping malls and video games.'
'Don't you ever l
ong to be able to drive the shopping to your front door?'
'Well, if I could do that, I probably wouldn't have a beach at the bottom of the garden, where the kids can swim all summer. I wouldn't live on an island where they can run wild. I'd rather have the beach and the freedom.'
After Marie's gone home with the boys, I call my mother, who is coming soon for her regular two week stay with me at Christmas.
'Do you want to bring Wally?' I ask.
Wally, her big, amiable, slobbery Rottweiler who prefers to lean on people than stand on his own four paws, loves a swim, even in the dead of winter.
'Is there somewhere you can put him?' she asks. She hasn't seen the house yet. Has no idea what to expect.
'Oh yeah. He'll be fine.'
What I'm really thinking, though, is that we might have our own entrant in the dog race. Not exactly a thoroughbred horse race, but a race nonetheless. My brother would like that.
'Still likes a swim, does he?' I ask, innocently.
'Mad about it. He's in the river every chance he gets.'
Right!
'Are you entering Gus?' I ask Stewart a couple of weeks before Christmas.
'Nah. He's too old.'
'Do you think your girls would like to swim with my mother's dog, Wally?'
I have learned that owners either swim with their dogs or kayak or row alongside. No boats with engines are allowed.
'Sure,' he says. 'I'll ask them.'
When my brother, John, was alive, Christmas was an event. We all trooped to Melbourne every second year for a sumptuous feast that he planned with the precision of a major military campaign. John loved food and wine. Loved, even more, sitting around a table and sharing with friends. In fact, the only successful gift I ever gave him was a copy of Larousse Gastronomique when it was first translated into English.
