A Life On Pittwater

by Susan Duncan

  Preheat oven to 200°C. Transfer spatchcock halves to baking dish and coo k uncovered for 25–30 minutes, skin side up, until golden and coo ked th rough. Or barbecue with lid closed, cooking bone side to the flames.

  Yachts & Putt Putts

  Yachts under billowing white sails glide splendidly along the water as the summer twilight races begin, with the joyful company, occasionally, of dolphins and penguins.

  Summer officially begins when we turn our clocks ahead an hour for daylight saving. Unofficially, it starts two weeks earlier when long, short, fat, slim, young and sleek or old and cosy yachts line up at the Lovett Bay Boatshed to have their bottoms scraped and anti-fouled in preparation for the first Woody Point Yacht Club twilight sail of the season.

  The creation of this quirky, disorganised little yacht club, where anything that floats can race, is a typical Pittwater story. In the early 1980s, a gorgeous, larrikin bloke called Tim Shaw rented a boatshed belonging to the closest house to Woody Point. Tim and one of his old school mates, Clint, shared the space and lived idyllically. Another school mate, David, had a bed there whenever he wanted it. Fishing from their deck, swimming in tepid water on sizzling days, and hosting parties with such joyful gusto and spontaneity they became wonderfully notorious.

  Tim owned an old 18-foot putt putt called Pelican, with a single cylinder Blaxland motor and a beautifully voluptuous shape. She’d been abandoned and left to rot so Tim decided to restore her. While he was agonising over a scarf joint and a couple of bits of timber with the boys, they discussed the exquisite lines of the Black Swan – the tender vessel for the New York Yacht Club. It was 1983, and just a couple of weeks after Alan Bond had won the America’s Cup for Australia.

  ‘As a joke,’ said David, ‘we decided we should write to the NYYC and offer them reciprocal rights for the use of Pelican (still unseaworthy) in return for our use of the magnificent Black Swan should we ever visit New York.

  ‘To appear bona fide, we realised we needed to become an entity and clearly, since it was all about boats, we thought we should call ourselves a yacht club.’

  At the time, they were standing on Woody Point. Hence Woody Point Yacht Club. David, an industrial engineer, sculptor and artist, designed a letterhead and a cloth badge, limited to an edition of one hundred. The badge was sold to a few, select locals within the boating fraternity, to recoup costs. The letterhead was never printed in any quantity because only one was ever required.

  ‘We never did receive a reply from the NYYC,’ David mused. (Although their offer must have been filed somewhere in the hallowed archives of the club. A few years later, a letter arrived addressed to the Commodore of the Woody Point Yacht Club, inviting him to tender for the rights to hold the America’s Cup! It was read out at the Annual General Meeting amidst much hilarity.)

  Pelican was eventually restored with the help of locals. ‘A few of us decided to give Tim a hand every Sunday morning through the summer,’ according to Philip, a Scotland Island resident. ‘We’d all bring a bottle of champagne and something to throw on the barbecue. Then we’d do a bit of sanding or whatever and when we’d finished work – or to be truthful, often before we’d begun – we’d pop the cork.’

  By the mid-1980s, the regular gathering of this rowdy, irreverent group of timber-boat-loving non-conformists with one thing in common (only one of them owned a yacht) became known as the Woody Point Yacht Club. By then, a membership fee of two dollars was introduced to cover costs. And every Sunday, the meeting was declared by opening the first bottle of booze while Tim fired up the hotplate.

  Beetle, one of the founding members, recalled: ‘Occasionally, the neighbour’s wife would send her husband, Barry, to the boatshed to tell us to quieten down. But Barry loved a party and he joined in. In appreciation, the boys voted him the first commodore of their fledgling yacht club, and he is the first and only patron.’

  Inevitably, many meetings turned into parties that continued late into the night. To cater for the growing crowds, Tim, an engineer, built a spit big enough to roast a pig, a lamb and several chickens simultaneously.

  Finally Pelican was launched. ‘During a weekend barbecue not long after, there was some friendly banter about putt putts. The challenge went out for a race around Scotland Island. That’s when the seed was planted for a more formal event.’

  As the membership grew, more and more timber boats were being lovingly restored by local boaties who’d find them washed up on the shore or left to rot in slipways. Soon, there were twenty-eight boats competing for a perpetual trophy made from an old exhaust water mixer. And that’s how the Woody Point Yacht Club began its official life. As a putt putt race!

  ‘Yachts came later,’ explained Beetle, who became the first handicapper for the putt putt race and stayed in the job for nearly twenty years. ‘I helped Tim to buy an old yacht called Firefly. He restored it, started sailing, and then one day, our joke yacht club actually had a yacht race.’

  ‘We need rules!’ said Philip. And so the Woody Point Yacht Club Charter came into being with his immortal line: ‘Founder members of the Woody Point Yacht Club were a dedicated group of social drinkers with a boating problem’.

  In a bid to keep the club true to its highly spirited, highly eccentric beginnings, the financial section of the charter reads:

  The founding members believed the club should not accumulate money, real estate or any assets of a major nature (other than a Temprite). Food and sufficient kegs are to be applied at the AGM to ensure that a zero balance is recorded by the Treasurer at the season’s end. Members should contribute no more than is necessary to cover immediate and unavoidable costs, e.g. the next round. The club’s only assets are the Pittwater and the warm hospitality so readily offered by members..

  Members unable (or unwilling) to meet their financial obligations, i.e. bastards who won’t pay, may, at the Committee’s discretion, be threatened with Life Membership to alleviate the Treasurer’s workload. Such penalty may also be applied to Members issuing worthless IOUs.

  Decisions regarding the club could be made at meetings with a quorum of ‘one member and one bottle of champagne’ (although in times of hardship, ‘a bottle of beer’ would do).

  When Tim Shaw, the much-loved driving force of the yacht club, was found drowned in 1988 after what is believed to be a boating accident in dreadful weather, the community fell silent in shock and grief. Bomber, one of the original group members, decided to create his own memorial to a man who’d enriched so many lives. Three times he put chains around a giant boulder, craned it onto his barge, Trump, and set off for Woody Point.

  Three times, the chains broke and the boulders sank into the bay. The fourth time he made it and, if you look hard, there’s a large stone with a plaque nailed to it in Tim’s memory.

  After Tim’s death, Clint and David bought the putt putt and Tim’s ashes were spread in Pittwater.

  ‘Some spilt in Pelican so my partner, Jenny, and I reckon the odd bit of Tim might still be lodged in a crack or under a rib,’ David said. When the urn was finally empty, it was put to good use as a bailer and champagne ice bucket. ‘If we had a beer during a putt putt, we always poured a bit in the urn for Tim.’

  Nowadays, from 5.30 onwards on a Wednesday afternoon, more than sixty boats jockey around the lovely timber start boat, Percerverance, in a race that’s handicapped so that no-one ever wins the series twice.

  The rule of ‘anything that floats can sail’ still applies and although the fleet now includes large and very flash yachts (nicknamed ‘Moneyboxes’ by some of us), it is the smaller, cherished vessels, timber or fibreglass, that win the hearts of the locals. And it is the gentlemanly skippers with a passion for boats, the water and a funny little yacht club that doesn’t even have a clubhouse, that set the tone for the club. This is a race that has always been more about community than competition. Which is its charm. To be truthful, as the fleet has grown, it is getting more difficult to know the names of skippers and crews on ev
ery boat. And the yell for ‘buoy room’ at the markers is becoming far more common when, once, all we cared about was not spilling our drinks. But the spirit of the club – the larrikin, generous spirit of Tim Shaw at the very beginning – still lives on. If it falters, it’s only for a moment.

  The putt putt race tradition also continues and every Australia Day weekend, timber putt putts, gentleman’s launches and working boats gather off Treharne Cove for a handicap start and a race around Scotland Island.

  At around 10 am, boats with Australian flags flying from masts, sterns, bowsprits, shrouds and halyards chug alongside the barge to pick up numbers for their start. There are weird outfits, dogs on bows and a party spirit that surges on long after the race is over (no-one cares who wins) and we jump off our boats to swim to Treharne Cove for (another) picnic.

  Artists & Actors

  Actors and artists, singers and songwriters – everyone’s creative spirit gets a chance to shine for a moment or two in wildly colourful art shows and riotous theatrical productions.

  An eclectic bunch of painters, sculptors, printers, illustrators, potters and amateur artists live on the Island and around the Bays. In fact, scratch the surface of nearly any offshore resident, and you’ll find an artist of one kind or another lurking under the surface. Art is everywhere – driftwood hung with shells at the back door, old buoys strung across a deck, abandoned oars painted in vibrant colours leaning against a wall, fisherman’s baskets hanging from beams – anything and everything scooped from piles of debris and resurrected to become a beautiful design.

  ‘There’s space to think here,’ says prize-winning artist Tracy Smith. ‘The environment suits creative souls.’ For a long time, too, it was a relatively inexpensive area to live – and still within easy reach of city galleries.

  Most years, a committee of artists gets together to organise an exhibition, which either takes place in the hall, the Scotland Island fire shed or, occasionally, at Tarrangaua. It can be a fundraising event, or purely an opportunity for artists to show and sell their work. Mostly it’s a combination of both. A bucket gets plonked at the front door asking for contributions to the fire brigade, the kindergarten or any worthy local projects. A percentage of sales are often donated and there’s rarely any hesitation when an artist is asked to create a work for a charity auction.

  Art exhibitions are notoriously difficult to mount, even under ideal circumstances. Add boats, weather and water into the equation and the potential for disaster escalates dramatically. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone though. Huge canvasses are loaded into tiny, tippy tinnies, precious pottery is wrapped and boxed for transport, sculpture installations are gently dismantled and laid, bit by bit, on barges. Then it’s all shipped across the water, with fingers crossed tightly on the tiller of the outboard motor. And, occasionally, a wad of gauze plugging a small leak in the hull.

  In November 2005, the Island H’Arts held an exhibition at Tarrangaua. After a series of meetings in the Smiths’ boatshed, details were nutted out and the committee given their allotted tasks. The day before the opening, as light drizzle turned to gentle rain, tinnies stacked with plastic-wrapped canvasses began arriving at the Lovett Bay ferry wharf.

  Meanwhile, the bagged walls of Tarrangaua were stripped bare, the verandah floor polished, the windows cleaned and the fridge filled with food to make sandwiches for hungry visitors. Earlier in the month, lemon cakes, apricot slices and chocolate brownies had been baked and frozen for morning and afternoon teas. All proceeds were destined for the Western Foreshores Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade and yellow-suited fireys served tea and coffee in shifts over the whole weekend. They also helped visitors up and down the eighty-eight steps when necessary and coordinated the ferry trips.

  Visiting artist Tim Storrier opened the show on a brilliantly sunny day to a full house. The cash register began to ring joyfully. The bucket filled with donations, and ticket sales to win a linocut print of a Pittwater scene donated by artist Katie Clemson soared. We had a hit on our hands.

  Then the next day, the heavens opened, the wind swung round to shoot straight from the Antarctic and blasted directly onto the verandah. The damp brought out leeches that hung alongside the steps waiting to pounce. No-one, we thought, will venture out in this kind of weather. But people did. The verandah rails were hung with wet weather gear like limp flags, and shoes and boots started to pile high at the front door. Umbrellas were stuffed into a garbage bin. A tarpaulin was hung at one end of the verandah to protect the cakes from the rain, and sales of red wine labels (attached to a free bottle of wine) took off. ‘Medicinal,’ everyone chirped, ‘to warm us up.’

  Artists may come and go – the number living offshore ranges between twenty-five and almost fifty at any given time – but their joy in their work and their generosity of spirit makes them one of the strong, underlying linchpins of our offshore community. They enrich our lives.

  Actors often pay so little attention to the script that if you go to a performance more than once you could be forgiven for thinking it was a new play with the same set.

  From the first days of Madame Stephanie, an Italian concert pianist who built a stage in her home at Trincomalee, enthusiastic singers, writers and musicians have banded together to make their own entertainment. A singalong around the piano, a recital by anyone who could play a musical instrument, or a few slapstick skits referring to local events.

  By the 1970s, productions had become a little more sophisticated and were performed in the basement of Laurie Duff’s (the ferry driver) home. The ensemble of anyone with the energy and the time soon became known as the Scotland Island Players, a name that has stuck.

  As productions became more ambitious, residents asked the council (then Warringah although it is now Pittwater) to fund a community hall. Each request was knocked back – building offshore was considered too difficult and despite more people living on the island, the numbers were still too small to justify the expense. In the end, according to long-time Scotland Island resident and one of the guiding forces behind the project, Bob Blackwood, the community offered to build the hall if the council paid for materials. Work began in 1980 with volunteer weekend labour. The building was completed in 1982 at a total cost of $20,000 and promptly insured for $120,000. It is now the most important public asset on the island. Plays, art exhibitions, fundraisers, birthday parties, musical soirees, yoga classes – just about anything – take place in the hall where a large commemorative tapestry, made by local women, hangs on the wall.

  Over the years, a huge diversity of theatre has been enthusiastically performed. Some written by locals, others borrowed from professional playwrights. ‘It was quite common to get a script from the library and then photocopy it,’ Bob said, grinning. ‘Write a few of our own lines, too, to make it more relevant to island life.’ The process worked well but came unstuck when the group ‘borrowed’ from ‘Table Manners’ from The Norman Conquests by British playwright Alan Ayckborn.

  We had quite a successful season – sell-outs – over two weekends,’ Bob recalled. Then a large manila envelope arrived for the show’s producer/director/referee.

  ‘In the corner, the sender’s name was listed as Alan Ayckborn Productions,’ Bob said. ‘We’d been caught! We all thought we were going to lose our homes. The producer was packing death.’

  Filled with fear, he opened the envelope. There was a photo of the author. On it he’d written ‘Best Wishes to the Scotland Island Players. Carry on the good work’. Apparently, some friends of Ayckborn’s had seen the poster on one of the ferry wharves and sent it to him with a note saying that he was now so famous his work was performed as far away as the Antipodes.

  ‘Ayckborn was thrilled.’

  The Players have one other distinction. It is apparently the only amateur company in the world that has ever been given permission to perform The Rocky Horror Show.

  ‘Perseverance,’ Bob said. ‘A Scotland Islander, Jon Hazelwood, was involved with the Sydney productio
n of the show. He kept pestering the copyright holders until he got a yes.’

  Performances by the Scotland Island Players, which usually run over the Friday and Saturday of successive weekends, are wonderfully unruly. Like stepping into country town life fifty years ago. The audience and the players are neighbours, sometimes the ad libs are funnier than the script, and no-one has expectations beyond having fun. The bigger the fool you make of yourself, the more you’re appreciated. The audience brings a picnic and a bottle or two of wine and sometimes the family dog. Cakes are shared, sandwiches offered around and every so often, a member of the production team, wearing pancake makeup, black fishnet stockings and a Playboy bunny outfit, wanders around with a platter of cheese and bikkies.

  Once, a classical music recital was given in an acoustically brilliant cave in Frog Hollow, a pretty little rainforest inlet in Lovett Bay. A grand piano was lowered from the house until it fitted snugly under the rock overhang where, no doubt, for hundreds and even thousands of years, Aborigines from the Guringai tribe took shelter. People passing in tinnies heard the music, cut their engines and threw out anchors to listen while the water rocked them and the moon rose on the horizon.

  The Dog Race

  Every Christmas Eve, in heatwaves or gales, dogs, kids, locals and visitors happily gather at The Point for the wonderfully chaotic Scotland Island to Church Point Dog Race and to wish each other the best of the season.

  Dogs. Tall. Short. Lean. Plump. Fluffy. Sleek. Smart. And sometimes a little bit slow on the uptake. They are an integral part of Pittwater life. They ride the bows of tinnies like furry figureheads, spend hot lazy days lolling on jetties, or hang out with their owners at The Point when work is over for the day. They hover at dinner parties, know which guest is a certainty to pass a tidbit under the table, and if you go away for a few days, someone always offers to mind them. Most dogs are so familiar with everyone’s homes they know where every stash of bones is buried in every backyard.