I'm on a Boat

Ferry on the Hawkesbury River


Beautiful view of the Hawkesbury


Me and Marty up top on the deck


The House Boat--rooms on the left and right, living room ahead to the left, kitchen and dining space to the right


You can kiiind of see the outline of how huge this sucker was!


One of hundreds of jellyfish

My weekend was spent on a boat. It was sunny all weekend. There was unlimited food and drinks. Water skiing. Tubing. Some pretty intense games of uno. Poker. Barbies. (That’s “barbeques, for all you silly Americans.) Birthday cake. Beer. Bubbly. Not bad for a weekend in mid-December!

I did, however, get slightly burnt. Just on my back, but it was pretty bad. It kept me off the water skis, to be certain…well, that and the MASSIVE amounts of JELLYFISH that were floundering about in the Hawkesbury River (see above).

We drove out to Wiseman’s Ferry, about an hour northwest of Sydney, on Friday arvo around 5 pm. Traffic was horrid, and we stopped at a drive-through bottle-o on the way for some spirits. (Bottle-o=liquor shop; spirits=liquor). We finally got there around 7 pm, and Jon and Jazz came to fetch us in a motorboat from the dock. The whole weekend was in celebration of Jon’s birthday (Jazz is his wife) and they rented out the houseboat. It was much more spacious than I thought, with beds for all 12 of us. There was a lounge area, a dining area, bathroom, the front and back parts of the boat (where the barbie was) and a huuuuge space up top with a table and chairs. I myself camped out up top on the front of the boat for some sun bathing and relaxing, where my back got the better of me and the Ozzie sun won over sunscreen. FYI, Australia is experiencing the worst heatwave in a century. Remember the bushfires of January? Hopefully they won't come back in 2010! Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer by the age of seventy. Scary.

With such intense heat, it's no wonder that a half hour under the Australian sun is like two hours under the American sun. It’s the same sun, but it hits you much harder.

The first time I went to a beach in Australia, down in Wollongong (yes, that’s the real name of a real city in Australia, and no, nobody here giggles when they say it), I was on the beach for no more than forty minutes and got burnt to a crisp--with piles of sunscreen on. My first encounter with the Pacific Ocean took place that same day, and needless to say, I was thoroughly beat up. I grew up splashing playfully in the mild waves of Lake Huron, the baby sister of the Pacific Ocean. In Wollongong, her big brother really let me know who was boss, tossing me around the water like a wet noodle. Up and down I went with the rips and currents, my body sucked in or spat out at its leisure. Salt invaded my mouth, an ingredient not shared with little lakes. Along with the salt, of course, comes sharks. During the coarse of my first two weeks here, there were three shark attacks. One attack was in Bondi (five minutes from me) another shark feasted on a teenager's leg, and still another victim was none other than a Navy diver; his leg was later amputated. If a navy diver can't escape them, what chance do the rest of us have!? As much as I love and adore Australia, my heart will always be with the Great Lakes.

Speaking of sharks, this river is also home to bull-sharks, though we didn’t see any this weekend. What we did see, as I mentioned, were heaps and heaps of jellyfish. Everywhere. Standing at the front or back of the boat, one had to wait only a few seconds before a jellyfish floated by, casually drifting along with its tentacles lagging threateningly behind it. Jenna got stung pretty badly while she was water skiing, as she wasn’t wearing a wetsuit. I myself had a VERY close encounter with one. I had just jumped (admittedly, a few beers deep) from the top deck of the boat into the cool, refreshing water below. It felt fantastic, as the sun had been beaming its cancer-infested rays upon on me all day. As I made my way to the surface, however, I felt something like wet plastic brush up on the side of my face. Of course, I immediately brushed it off and swam towards the boat, terrified. Low and behold, Marty laughed when I finally scrambled up the ladder to safety (there was a current, and despite my swimming, the boat only inched its way closer to me as I kicked). “Jellyfish,” he said. “Right by your face. I would have warned you, but you didn’t give me any time.” Suffice to say, that was my last contact with that river water. Shortly before that, I had gone out on the motor boat and was watching Marty water ski. He didn’t get very far, however, as before he could get a grip on the rope, it got caught on his finger. He signalled us over, and it was swollen, gushing blood, and slightly purple. Strike two was my encounter with the jellyfish, and strike three was Jenna’s rashes. I miss Lake Huron!

But the sunsets were beautiful, the food was delicious and the company was fantastic. There were twelve of us, and by the end of the weekend I had gotten to know most of them pretty well. Living on a boat will do that for people.

By Sunday arvo I was fairly tired, pretty burnt (on my back, at least) and ready for a nap. We cleaned up around noon, headed back to the dock and back home we went. I was asleep in the car within twenty minutes.

Sunday night was a lot of relaxing, in preparation for my big week with Yamaha in Melbourne. I went over my music a few times, and felt more than ready. Confident in every song, I knew that I would blow those Yamaha people away with my preparation work and enthusiastic smile. All my lyrics were down pat, my made-up dance movements well-rehearsed, and my solfege singing more or less on key and ready to teach to the children. Yamaha, bring it on!!