I'm not hopping from hostel to hostel, not climbing glaciers, not driving from hot spring to waterfall, from gorgeous beach to glamorous new city. Australia has been pretty boring and I've not really done anything exciting in travel blog terms, I've just had a great time hanging out with new friends, taking it easy and living real life - going to the supermarket, being up for class, structured days, weekends off. All very 'normal'.
I nearly missed it out from my itinerary altogether when I was planning this trip - thinking that it's a giant dusty rock in the middle of the Indian ocean, full of Australians just itching to lord it over me as a fan of most English sporting teams.
But to my eternal consternation it's actually a delightful place. I've not seen a single snake/spider/crocodile (touch wood), I've not been berated for being a whingeing pom, and although on occasion it's unbearably hot, most of the time the weather is glorious. Damn it.
I still prefer New Zealand, but the fact I've been here for two and a half months rather than the originally scheduled month speaks volumes.
Anyway, the pointless I was making is that having got off the traveller trail (as I wanted to) I no longer feel like I'm travelling in the way I expected I would be when I left home. The experience here has been very different from when I initially left - going to visit my daughter in south America and travelling on my own on a new continent. Ideas that were terrifying to me just a year ago and which now seem so normal. And Australia now seems easy by comparison. The people are the same, the cities the same but hotter, everything is familiar. Apart from the roos of course.
After my lovely time at Chez Susie in Wollongong I was ready for something new and the sailing school certainly provided that. It was a bit of a culture shock to get onto a yacht and settle in for five weeks in a cabin with a three-foot high roof space.
I popped in to see my old New Zealand Spaceship comprades, Frances and Carly who are now working as nurses in Perth, on the way and we hung out on Cottesloe Beach (famous for its shark attacks) and had a few drinks.
I arrived in Bunbury, about two hours south of Perth, and was introduced to my home for the next five weeks - yacht Madeline, a 41-foot Beneteau.
I had imagined when I booked this course that Western Australia would be a paradise of undiscovered beaches, wilderness, gorgeous seas and stunning sunsets. And it does have all of these things. The only problem with undiscovered beaches and wilderness is that there's, well, loads of empty space. Miles and miles of beautiful sandy beaches stretching to the horizon on the coastline, but not a single distinguishing landmark, town or anchorage.
It really is empty round here. Apparently WA is the size of mainland Europe and has a population of 2 million people - 1.5 million of whom live in Perth. Bunbury is the state's second city and I reckon Bunno is not even the size of Bournemouth, more like Lymington!
So not only was there not a great deal to photograph on land, one of the problems with boats at sea is they bounce around which makes taking photos of what's happening on the boat itself also pretty difficult. Unfortunately the best time to take photos on the boat is when you're heeled right over, crashing into the waves and generally getting wet and being shouted at. Again, not conducive to elegant marine photography, so apologies in advance for the paucity of decent shots.
Mindful that I wasn't going to be able to get to the internet regularly or even use my laptop (I left it at Frances and Carly's place in Perth) I started to keep little notes in my diary so I could give a day-by-day account to you all about what I'd been up to.
Day 1: SE 8-15 kts, gusting 27 , 35 degrees. 6.30am start. Passage to Port Geographe. Finish 7.30pm. Beers. Bed 9.30.
Day 2: SE 25-30kts, gusting 38, 32 degrees. 7am start. Reefing practice Koombana Bay. Speed record 8.2 kts indicated, 2 reefs in the main plus gib.
After a few days of this though, I realised it's probably not very exciting to read if you don't sail. (It's not that interesting even if you do actually). The practical course days pretty much went like the above, but often with the added bonus of dolphins for company as we cruised along.
The first week was my 'Competent Crew' course and with me was Stewart - probably the dourest dour Scotsmen I've ever met. Steve, the instructor, was an IT consultant from London with a penchant for Sun-In, and though he was a very personable chap even he could not get this guy to crack a smile.
Stewart works for Shell on dive boats in the North Sea doing a month on and a month off and he was holidaying in WA to avoid paying too much tax in the UK. I'd be tempted to say such a sea-based, lonely career had robbed him of the ability to socialise - but that would be unfair. He probably wasn't a fan of middle-class Londoners either.
The highlight of the week, aside from Stewart's scintillating company of course, was the race between the school's two yachts back from Bussleton to Bunbury (about 30nm). We'd both ended up in Busselton on the same evening, so after squeezing six hairy-arsed sailors into two tiny inflatables (only one of which had an outboard and had to tow the other) we headed ashore for a few drinks as the sun set. We managed about three pints before they threw us out of the only bar in town and staggered back with both crews vowing to beat the other home the following day.
Needless to say after five hours hard racing the yacht with the comp crew on lost (mine).
It's worth saying a few things about the other guys on the boat as they were a pretty interesting bunch. Jean-Marie, the guy on the left, is Swiss and a bit of a Walter Mitty character. He said he and his wife ran their own marketing consultancy, but they'd given it all up to move to Bunbury and to change careers. He had done this before apparently both as a self-help guru and as an off-road driver. I don't say this to be uncharitable, but just to give a flavour of my crew mates' personalities. When you're living on a boat with people for so long, there's a lot of time to kill and you probably find out more about people than you'd quite like.
The guy in the red t-shirt is Gary, the chief instructor, and a more lovely guy you couldn't wish to meet. He was a Royal Navy engineer and British motorbike champion, but broke his neck and finished his years in the Navy as a desk jockey. Weirdly he broke it in a taxi in Dubai, rather than on a motorbike. He then moved over to Bunbury to be a sailing instructor and was just starting to date a local girl - apparently one night they got dressed up and played cowboys and Indians in his flat in the cardboard box fort he'd built from the boxes hsi stuff had been shipped from England in. No, really. And that was the third or fourth date.
Such a nice guy though and so patient with us dull buggers who were determined to bend his beloved Madeline.
The next one round from Gary is John. We only hung out for a week or so and he then had to go back to the UK to see his sick grandfather. He was supposed to be coming on the 'trip' to Fremantle with James and I, but that didn't work out so James and I had to do it on our own. He was also an IT consultant from London. So far there hadn't been a single Australian at the school - it was even owned by a pom. I'm not saying that was a bad thing you understand.
James was a trader, also from London, who had worked for Bernie Madof but then decided to escape to Australia when his office was shutdown in the wake of Mr Madof's nefarious activities. We ended up hanging out alot together, and if it hadn't been for him I probably would have gone a little bit mental down in Bunno.
Well, we did go a bit mental in Bunno - especially at the weekends - but there really wasn't much else to do in the wilderness if you're not sailing. We spent most of our time eating the most delicious fresh crab at the local fisho, quaffing local wines, playing Scrabble and taking the piss out of the few Aussies we could actually find. And going to the pub. Quite alot.
We even had a romantic weekend for two away when we hired a car and headed south to the Margaret River wine region. The wine region itself was so so - vines as far as the eye could see, faux-French chateaux, people talking lovingly about grapes, the usual. But where the actual river Margaret met the sea was like heaven on earth. If Carlsberg made beaches...
A couple of hours further south of Margaret River is Cape Leeuwin, which is essentially the bottom left hand corner of Australia. It also happens to be where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean meet. Look, here are the pics to prove it. Can you see the line?
In between all the fun sailing bits we had to do a fair amount of theory work, and even had to do some exams. Proper ones, with sealed question papers, time limits and an invigilator (well if you count Gary snoring at the front of the classroom for an hour and a half invigilating).
It was probably the most intense study I'd done since school. More so even than university because I actually wanted to learn and I found I cared about what I was learning - and I couldn't skip the classes.
And although they were long days - 9 till 5 in a stuffy classroom for five days at a stretch - the view at smoko wasn't bad.
James had a slightly obsessive fear of sharks which we all took the piss out of at first, but eventually as his paranoia spread around the yachts we all stopped going in the water.
Knowing how afraid of sharks he was it was particularly cruel of Gary to make him get in the water and dive for the boat keys which some chav from Poole had dropped in there without telling anyone. Cruel, but funny. Of course I was there to lend moral support and take pictures of the event, just in case he was attacked by a great white in three feet of water.
I thought he might have a point though when I saw this lurking alongside. It's not a shark, but it defnitely doesn't look friendly.
After the first week of theory I then had a week of putting it into practice on a boat which was being used by four yachtmasters for their final week of prep for their exam. It's a pretty intense exam - a whole weekend with an instructor on board watching your every move. Lots of people fail and it is pretty stressful. Hence the week of prep was pretty stressful too.
James had gone to another boat in another marina (where it was regatta week and the bars were full of yachties) so I was left on my own with four very intent, stressed men who spent their evenings revising and going to bed before 9. While the social life wasn't much fun, I did end up doing the same exercises they were doing during the week - scary but good experience.
And they all passed in the end, bless 'em.
The highlight of the week was the passage to Fremantle - 100nm, 20 hours, arriving at a working port just before dawn. John was supposed to be coming with James and I on this final trip, but he was replaced by our first Aussie crew Gary and Jane from Perth. The first day was flat calm, which gave us time to find out a bit about Gary and Jane.
Jane had left Gary, her husband of 20 years, six months earlier and was going sailing with her new lover on his boat and wanted to learn to crew it properly. Gary in an effort to win back his wife had decided to gazump the lover and go sailing with her first - which is why they were on the course. See, I told you people overshare when they're sailing.
Anyway, unfortunately for Gary he got seasick. Really, really, really seasick. He basically puked for four straight days, but he refused to give up and stay on land and each morning he'd wake up knowing he had 8 to 10 hours of feeling like death ahead of him and he'd do it cos he wanted to prove to his wife he loved her and wanted her back. I admired him for that. I'm not sure if it worked, but you had to give the man credit for trying.
James finally put his money where his mouth was and we caught a fish. He'd been saying for weeks how keen a fisherman he was, but we hadn't seen any evidence of his prowess. And then just as Gary was betting him a case full of Jim Beam that he'd never catch anything he hooked a tuna. He let me reel it in (my first fish ever) and then he:
gutted it...
filleted it...
cooked it...
and ate it...
All within two hours of catching it. It was the freshest fish I've ever eaten and a meal I'll always remember even if Gary (the instructor not the puker) wouldn't let us have any wine with it. Git.
We eventually arrived at Fremantle at about 4.30am and just collapsed on the pontoon and had a couple of bottles to make up for it. Much to the consternation of the Royal Perth Yacht Club I'm sure, but stuff 'em we was kin' knackered.
It must be something about his Navy background or having been in a neck-brace for a year, because instructor Gary doesn't like wasting time. The next day we were back out sailing again practising anchoring drills, and the day after that we set off to do the 100 miles back to Bunbury. Puker Gary finally called it quits at Mandurah, missing out on the best two days sailing of the whole five weeks. It was glorious.
As we approached Bunbury I just didn't want it to end.
But I was leaving with a real sense of accomplishment. I'd achieved something that for years I didn't think I was up to. Gary presented James and I with our certificates, we had one last night in Bunno to say goodbye and then just like that it was over.
