Daggers in my Backpack

This is the story of our serendipitous meeting with the Brais family - Marianne, Luigi, Peter and Micky - in London, 1974. We have remained the closest of friends to this day, visiting and corresponding across the miles for almost 50 years.

The story begins, as unlikely as it might seem, in the tiny village of Moyale in northern Kenya. Moyale actually straddles the border between Kenya and Ethiopia. At the time, Penny, Candice and I were hitch-hiking from Nairobi, Kenya through Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt to the city of Aden, before flying to England. Such a trip these days would be rather more dangerous, given the instability and perpetual conflicts in the region.  In 1974 there were dangerous elements to the journey, but we weighed the odds and, armed with the invincibility of youth, we plunged in.

By the time we reached Moyale, we had already endured one of the most dangerous rides of our hitch hiking years. After overnighting at the outskirts of a dusty village about half way from Nairobi to the northern boarder and waiting hours for a ride, we were finally picked up by a Sikh man driving a Volvo. He claimed to have competed in the famous East Africa Rally, but his erratic driving eventually led me to ask him to stop and let us out in the middle of nowhere. Only then did he slow down and drive a bit more responsibly.

The main cause of his bad driving was the distraction of the two beautiful sisters in the back seat. Each time Penny or Candice made a comment, he would turn to make eye contact and contribute to the conversation, completely ignoring the dangerous gravel road ahead. Each time this happened, I would turn from the front passenger seat and glare or frown at Penny and Candice in an attempt to stop them distracting our driver. They would return my glare with a puzzled expression, oblivious to the problem.

Our driver was actually travelling to collect his wife, girl friend and family who had been injured in an accident a few days previously. As we approached the village where his family was hospitalized, we passed the wreck of his Land Rover, which he had rolled over and written off. We actually visited his girlfriend in hospital, an attractive young English woman who’s pretty face had been badly cut up in the accident. We didn’t get into the details of his ménage a trios!

We eventually arrived in Moyale and made our way to the border, only to learn that the weekly bus to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, had left an hour earlier. Rather than cross the border and wait a week on the Ethiopian side, we decided to look for a place to stay on the Kenyan side. We discovered a Catholic mission on the outskirts of the village and asked the priest if we might pitch our tents in the adjoining gardens.

Father Antonio was an Italian priest who had devoted his life to the spiritual, social and health needs of the surrounding African communities. By the time we met him in 1974 he had established an amazing bond of trust with the local people, who knew that they could approach him on any subject and secure his help and support.

The nuns who normally lived and served at the mission were away at a gathering elsewhere, so instead of pitching our tents on the mission grounds, Father Antonio invited us to move into their quarters for the week. After days of dusty and dangerous hitch hiking, we luxuriated in the peace of the spotless mission residence and gardens.

Father Antonio tended to his widespread flock in a rugged Land Rover, at that time the vehicle of choice for anyone navigating the African wilderness through the ever changing seasonal conditions. Over the course of the week, he invited us to join him on several visits to outlying settlements and bush camps - some in the traditional style of nomadic herder camps comprised of mud huts surrounded by a corral of thorn tree branches to keep livestock safe from marauding predators.

In one village he was building a school at the request of the village elders. At another he tended to a young woman suffering from an infection as a result of the mutilating effects of female circumcision still practiced in the region. 

Father Antonio was a true saint, loved and respected by all. In the evenings, Penny and Candice cooked special meals for us all, and we sat together engaged in conversation.

When the week finally passed and the time came to cross the border and catch the bus to Addis Ababa, Father Antonio requested that we courier two large hand-made Maasai seme - hunting daggers - to the young sons of his friends Luigi and Marianne Brais in England. He gave us the address of their Italian restaurant in North London and we carefully wrapped the daggers in cloth and placed them in the bottom of my back pack. We then bid a sad farewell to our new friend and continued our northward journey.

Our travels through Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt presented many adventures and some dangerous, even life threatening moments which I will describe in another chapter. Suffice to say we eventually arrived safely in London after flying from Aden in Egypt via Frankfurt, Germany.

A couple of weeks after our arrival, we set out to complete our commitment to Father Antonio to deliver the daggers to his friends Peter and Micky Brais, then aged about 12 and 10. We had the address of Luigi and Marianne’s Italian restaurant in North London, so donning our best jeans and denim shirts, we took the underground to the nearest stop and walked to the restaurant. On our arrival we were rather surprised to discover that “Luigi’s” was actually a 5 star white linen, silver and crystal-ware restaurant in the heart of North London, and we were a little embarrassed to be showing up dressed in well worn denim. We introduced ourselves at the door, explaining that we were delivering a package from Africa.

At that moment, we experienced for the first time the love, warmth and generosity that personified Luigi and Marianne Brais. We were welcomed unreservedly into their restaurant where they insisted that we sit down to a fabulous Italian Sunday lunch. Our humble attire was ignored completely, and we were treated like royalty. They were intrigued and delighted by the huge elaborately crafted daggers that we had safely transported through numerous border posts and customs authorities, all the while wrapped in their home spun cloth disguises at the bottom of my backpack. (Of course this was long before Xray scanning of luggage.)

That precious friendship has lasted to this day - 49 years and counting - and we have treasured their love and support - almost as surrogate parents. We have stayed for extended periods in their lovely North London home. On one memorable visit, Luigi converted a tiny Swiss-style garden shed into a delightful bunkhouse for Josh and Aidan. On that same visit they lent us their precious Rover sedan to tour Europe for two weeks. For a special dinner cooked with great love and attention to detail by Marianne, Luigi produced a vintage wine from his prodigious cellar to mark the occasion. To this day it remains the finest wine we ever tasted.

Eventually, Marianne and Luigi visited us in Canada, where we were able to repay some of their generous hospitality through the years. Since Luigi died in 2007, we have made a point of phoning Marianne as regularly as our own parents, and visiting her on every trip to the UK. We have also maintained a lovely friendship with Peter and Micky, and closely follow their own journeys into parenthood and family life.

PROLOGUE

On a visit with Marianne and family in 2018, I learned of a miraculous twist to our entwined multi-ethnic lives. Penny, a Canadian and I, Australian, first met Luigi an Italian and his German wife Marianne in 1974. Their English born son Micky married Gabby, the daughter of Ewa, a Polish Jew who at the age of three was dropped from the window of a cattle car on its way from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, the Nazi extermination camp.

Eva’s mother Ruth was the first female lawyer to be called to the bar in Poland before the war. Having recognized the dangers that lay ahead as she was herded from the ghetto, she secreted a hacksaw blade in the sole of her boot. As the train trundled towards Treblinka, Ruth sawed through a bar over the window opening and bribed two young men to help her through the narrow gap, with a promise to drop three year old Ewa after her. The amazing account of her miraculous recovery of tiny Eva from the snowy railway tracks and her survival of the war is told in her autobiography “A Jump For Life”, the manuscript of which was discovered hidden in a drawer by Ewa and her sister after Ruth’s death.

Lion in the Lamp Light

For independent “hippies” touring the game parks of East Africa in 1973, the experience was inexpensive, largely unregulated and unsupervised. It was possible to rent a vehicle and travel where, when and however one wished. We were required to show a permit at the entry point to each park, but the boundaries showing on our maps had no actual physical demarcation.

Penny, her sister Candice and I planned our multi-park tour to coincide with Candice’s vacation from her teaching job on Vancouver Island. Penny and I greeted her at the Nairobi airport as she stepped off her long flight from Canada with a cheery spring in her step. We were all excited to be setting out to see the ‘wilds of Africa’ together.

For months we had planned a circuit that would take us to all the major East African game reserves. As usual, Penny had done her research well and we were armed with maps and a list of all the key places we would visit – the Serengeti Plains, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Etosha Pan, Lake Naivasha and Amboseli National Park as well as Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Mt Kenya.

We bought an Olympus OM1 SLR camera complete with zoom lens, rented a VW Beetle complete with sunroof for wild-life viewing, and set off with two tents, sleeping bags, cooking gear and ample food supplies.

On day two, the VW blew the main engine oil seal, which required a full day of repairs. I soon discovered the likely cause of the problem. While having the engine oil checked by a gas station attendant a few days later, I caught him red handed at a crafty sleight of hand. As he withdrew the dipstick he ran his finger and thumb down the stick, wiping the bottom half inch of oil off the stick before holding it up for my inspection. The dipstick indicated that we needed a liter of oil. Having caught the trick, I asked him to dip it again. Realizing he’d been caught, he didn’t try the trick a second time, and of course the oil level showed full.

We could well imagine the cost of this little confidence trick to any number of motorists, particularly foreign tourists driving rental cars. To individual gas stations employing the trick, it would mean the sale of an extra liter of oil. But for who knows how many unwitting tourists taken in by the scam, it would add up to severely overfilled oil sumps and the resulting blown main engine seals, thus nicely padding the profits of the local mechanics. For the rest of our trip we always checked our own oil!

Shortly after leaving the limited paved roads, our cream coloured Beetle quickly took on the appearance of a true African Safari vehicle, the lower half covered with emblematic red dust and mud. In park after park we cruised slowly and carefully in search of wildlife, gradually checking off all the wild game of East Africa – the great elephant herds still roaming at that time, giraffe, buffalo, wildebeest, springbok, zebra, hyena. Especially exciting were the big cats - lion, leopard and cheetah.

Candice had brought a lightweight orange hiking tent from Canada. Penny and I had bought our slightly heavier cotton canvas tent in Kenya two years previously. Although it had no fly, it was reasonably rainproof as long as we didn’t touch the sides. The damp-proof floor was made of a robust plasticized material. By the time of our game park safari, it already had two repairs of foot-long slits made by would- be thieves. On two separate occasions during our southbound overland trip in Tanzania, thieves had cut through the tent fabric close to our sleepy heads, hands reaching in in search of the valuables presumed to be under our clothes-bundle pillows. Fortunately we were too cunning to fall victim to the trick, sleeping with our valuables deep in our sleeping bags.

At the time of the second robbery attempt, I woke to either the sound of the knife cutting through the fabric or the cool breeze blowing through the gaping hole. I yelled a warning to Penny, struggled naked from my clammy sleeping back, fumbled for our tiny hatchet by the tent entrance and stooped blindly through the low entrance into the blackness of the African night. Fortunately the would-be thief had slipped silently away, leaving me cursing but safe from a machete slash or worse.

We felt lucky to have avoided any losses save the damage to our tent. The tent bag was made of the same fabric as the tent, and we eventually had both rents professionally repaired with fabric from the bag – lasting reminders of our near misses with knife wielding thieves preying on vulnerable tourists.

On our game safari, we would pull the Beetle into East Africa’s version of campsites. These were generally marked with a simple “Camp Site” sign, and perhaps an outdoor latrine. Occasionally there might be a picnic table, but no fence, no gate, no attendant and no fee! To complete the African wilderness experience, we rarely encountered any other campers. We soon realized that while travelling by day we had the relative protection of the thin sheet metal of our trusty Beetle, but at night the only thing separating us from every wild beast in Africa was the flimsy fabric of our tents.

Having settled into our respective tents at the end of a particularly long day, the sisters exchanged a few muffled words before dozing off. Meanwhile, I lay awake listening to the distant cackling of a pack of hyenas. I’d once read that hyenas could actually be more dangerous to humans than the big cats. They had been known to drag campers out of their tents, leaving just a pile of bloody bones. The ominous creepy cackle of the pack grew steadily louder and closer. Pretty soon it was obvious that they were very close by. Personally petrified, but worried that Candice was alone and also fearful in her tent, I called to reassure her. Unfortunately she had slept right through the arrival of the hyena pack and was awoken only by my call. The three of us lay nervously in our sleeping bags, unsure if we’d make it safely through the night. Fortunately the pack tired of our campsite and eventually slunk off, muttering sullenly to each other.

The following night was to be one of the most terrifying of my life. This time we were alone in yet another un-fenced and unguarded campsite. We were carrying a tiny red kerosene lantern, and, after our experience with the hyenas the night before, decided to rig it on a string between the two tents with the idea that it’s feeble light might keep wild animals at bay.

How wrong we were! In the twilight after supper, we heard the deep, deep, throaty rumble of a male lion far off in the distance. By this time on our safari we were becoming accustomed to the varied night noises of the African bush and thought little of it. Once again we climbed wearily into our tents – Candice alone in her light- weight hiking tent, Penny and me in our twice-slashed blue canvas tent. Ours actually had a large triangular mesh vent at the end opposite the door, with a canvas flap that could be rolled and tied to one side. On this hot humid night, we had the flap tied open to give us some extra ventilation.

All three of us lay on our backs for over an hour, listening to the deep rumble of the lone male lion. Contrary to our notion that our lantern light might keep animals at bay, this old lion seemed drawn to the flickering light. The rumble grew louder and louder, closer and closer, until I was certain he had come right into our camp-site. Slowly and carefully I rose up on my knees to peer out of our mesh vent, and there in the flickering lantern light stood the majestic king of beasts! My throat was tight, dry and hoarse, and my heart pounded so hard that I swear the lion could hear it. I made a “Shush” sign to Penny and pointed in the direction of the lion. He casually paced right between the two tents, directly under our warning lamp light. I’ll swear I didn’t breath for a full two minutes, fearful that at any moment his claws might add multiple gashes to our already tatty tent.

As our luck would have it, this was not a man or woman eating lion. Either that or he had already eaten that night. We survived our second night of wild African mid- night visitors, but the memory of my terror that night remains with me to this day, undoubtedly the most alarming experience of my life!

Pulau Kapas Adventure Oct. ‘72

During our lengthy hitch-hiking adventure along the east coast of Malaysia and Thailand, Penny and I longed for a Robinson Crusoe experience on a remote tropical island. When we arrived in the fishing village of Marang, we decided the time was right. A short distance from the village lay the uninhabited island of Pulau Kapas.

On the evening of our arrival in Marang, we walked around the foreshore and primitive docks in search of a fisherman willing to transport us out to the island. One fisherman agreed and after settling on a charter fee, time and meeting place, we parted company and set about purchasing a week’s provisions from the market before retiring to our lodging for the night.

Next morning we arrived at our rendezvous site to discover that our charter skipper wanted to back out of the deal we had made and refused to take us. Our limited knowledge of the Malay language prevented us from understanding the reason for his change of heart, something we would soon discover the hard way.

Undeterred, we wandered among the fisherman in search of someone else to deliver us to Pulau Kapas and eventually found a cheerful skipper willing to ferry us to our dreamed of ‘desert island’. The vessel was a double ended open boat about 20 feet long with an inboard motor amidships. The skipper and crew were friendly and hospitable and welcomed us aboard along with our backpacks and provisions.

We chugged out to sea over a gently rolling swell, eventually arriving at a sandy beach on the south west side of the island. Two burly crewmen jumped over the side into the surf and insisted on carrying us and our bags ashore pig-a-back style. We walked up the golden sand and one of our crew effortlessly scaled a coconut palm and cut down several bunches of coconuts to add to our provisions.  

Because of the low surf running on the beach, the fishermen were keen to depart before their heavy boat touched bottom. With a cheery wave they chugged away, leaving us alone on the beach. We could vaguely see the low lying mainland coast to the west, but to all intents and purposes we were now marooned on our very own desert island.

Scouting the beach for a place to set up camp, we discovered a sea cave which looked like an ideal place to live out our Crusoe experience. We took our backpacks into the back of the cave and proceeded to set out our ground sheet and sleeping bags. At that stage the tide was low and the sand in the back of the cave was dry and comfortable.

 Entrance to our Pulau Kapas sea cave.

On that first idyllic afternoon, we wandered the deserted beach, drank fresh coconut milk and marvelled at our good fortune.  By mid afternoon, the wind began to pick up, ominous black clouds rolled over the southern horizon, and the temperature dropped dramatically. Rain arrived in the late afternoon, driving us into the welcome shelter of our sea cave. A camp fire in the mouth of the cave proved to be a bad idea. The rising wind blew the smoke into the back of the cave, mingling with the smell of rotting seaweed  to create a rather unpleasant odour.

As we settled into our sleeping bags, still high and dry at the back of the cave, we noted that the tide was still rising inexorably towards us. With no knowledge of the tide cycle in the region, we had no idea what the night ahead might hold in store for us.

By 1.00 am, large waves were reaching for our dry beds and we realized we had no choice but to venture out into the fury of the storm, for fear of being trapped and drowned in our increasingly dangerous cave. Tiny flash lights in hand (it would be years before we had the luxury of head lamps for our adventuring) we quickly stuffed our belongings into our back packs and I led the way out of the cave. By this time the waves were thigh high and the sand in the floor of the cave churned with each step. Had we waited much longer, our exit might have been extremely challenging.

Once clear of the cave mouth, we plunged into the jungle at the height of the storm.

The reason for our first skipper’s reluctance to bring us to the island steadily dawned on us.  We were caught up in the fury of the first tropical monsoon storm of the season.

At this stage in our travels we didn’t have a tent, just a heavy gauge black plastic sheet. On the rare occasion that we had to sleep in the open, we would rig the plastic as either a ground sheet or a tarp, depending on conditions.

The wind was so violent, the jungle so tangled and the ground so rough that we struggled to rig the tarp over a ridge rope strung between two trees. Eventually we had a crude shelter flogging wildly in the wind and pummelled by the rain. We clung together, cold wet and miserable, until the dawn light finally broke through. It was one of the longest nights of our lives.

The rain let up a bit at dawn, allowing us to pack up our tarp and struggle out of our jungle camp. Back on the beach, we eventually found a trail leading to higher ground, so off we went in search of a better camp site. After a relatively short hike we were thrilled to discover a beautiful tiny traditional cottage constructed of bamboo frames and palm frond roof and walls.

As the only people crazy enough to occupy Pulau Kapas during the first onslaught of the monsoon season, we happily settled into our new-found story-book cottage, spreading our drenched gear to dry. We soon had our tiny “chuffer” stove cooking up a fine breakfast.

Around noon we watched from our dandy covered lookout deck as a traditional open fishing boat arrived in the bay below and proceeded to drop anchor. That morning we had noted a large rocky reef exposed at low tide, right beneath the anchorage these fellows had chosen, so we hiked down the bush trail to the beach to warn them of the danger.

When we arrived on the beach we discovered three fishermen rather the worse for wear. They were all lightly dressed and shivering. One was an older man and the other two were probably in their teens. They had obviously struggled to weather the same storm as us. One of the younger fellows had severe rope burns on his arms and hands, possibly from handling their anchor line during the storm.

We invited them to join us in our new-found cottage so that Nurse Penny could tend to their wounds and we could warm them up with hot tea and rice. Thus began a delightful afternoon interaction without a single word of each other’s language. We were all obliged to communicate strictly with sign language and grunts, interspersed with much laughter.

After ointment and bandages had been applied and our guests had warmed up and satisfied their appetites, I set about attempting to warn them that they had anchored right above a dangerous rocky reef, and that they should move their boat before the next low tide or risk serious damage. We eventually got the message through and they reluctantly left our cozy cottage and headed back to sea in search of a safer anchorage.

With the passing of the first monsoon storm of the season, we enjoyed an afternoon hike to the east side of the island before returning to our cottage for the night. The next day our fisherman/charter boat operator returned to the island to check on our well being and we decided that in the face of further stormy weather on the horizon we would end our desert island experience and head back to the mainland.

There is an interesting sequel to the story. The memory of our failure to heed our first charter skipper’s reluctance to take us to Pulau Kapas served us well months later during our Everest Base Camp Trek. Following the stiff ascent on the first day of our trek, we arrived in a high altitude village and sought out a private home to spend the night. This was the first of twenty plus days when we would arrange accommodation in private homes at the moment if our arrival in a village.

On this first occasion, the owners allowed us to set up camp on their front porch. Beneath  the roof over the front entrance were two raised benches, each the size of a narrow 8’ bunk, with just enough space to store our backpacks and roll out our sleeping bags. As was typical in rural Nepal, the front door led to an animal shelter in the lower level, while the family lived up stairs.

We settled in for the night, protected from the wind, and later from the snow. By the next morning it was snowing quite heavily and our host advised us in rather strong terms that we should remain on his porch for another day and night rather than venturing off onto the snowy trail. Having learned from our Pulau Kapas adventure that it is wise to listen to the advice of the locals, particularly relating to the weather, we settled in for an unscheduled rest day on day two of our three week trek, drinking tea, playing chess, and watching the snow drift all around us.

By the following day the weather cleared and we were able to set off once again, delighting in the large swaths of pink snow beneath the huge rhododendron trees, caused by the dye from the petals that had fallen in the snow during the storm. We were to learn via the grape vine that day that several locals had lost their life on a couple of the high passes, caught out in the wild weather and freezing temperatures that our host had warned us about.

Thus our Palau Kapas adventure became part of our family folk law, serving as a constant reminder to heed the advice of local people when travelling in unfamiliar places.

Sherpa Hospitality - April 1973

In the spring trekking season of 1973, Grammie and I spent three weeks trekking from the tiny village of Jiri, a one day bus journey from Kathmandu, to Tengboche Monastery. The monastery was situated at 13,000 feet and Mount Everest Base Camp was a further 5,000 foot trek at 18,000 feet. 

We had planned to trek all the way to Base Camp, but were advised against it at Tengboche because an Italian Army expedition, using a massive heard of yaks to portage their equipment, had trampled a virtual canyon through deep snow, making conditions dangerous for trekkers without proper high altitude down clothing.

We chose to travel without guides or porters, carrying 35 & 40 pound backpacks respectively, with our sleeping bags, a few food staples our tiny camp stove, but no tent. 

Each evening we would walk through a pre-planned village at the end of a strenuous day’s trek to determine the most likely home from which to seek food and shelter. Some homes were obviously very poor, while others looked more affluent. A telltale welcome sign would often be an attractive hand made front door, more elaborate than the average rough hewn plank doors of the neighbouring cottages. 

We would knock on the door of the chosen house and sign fingers to mouth and palm to ear - the universal language requesting food and a bed for the night. The return sign, fingers held up, would display the price in rupees. We never had to barter as the prices were always extremely generous compared to the prices we had paid throughout South East Asia and India.

Most Sherpa homes were two stories, with an animal barn and firewood storage downstairs and family accommodation upstairs. In the middle of the upstairs floor would be a mud and stone hearth and an open fire used for cooking, heating and light. The host would serve our meal by the fire then family and guests would bed down for the night around the fire.

One day while crossing a high plateau we misjudged time and distance and failed to arrive in the pre-planned village until well after dark.

A lone dim light guided us the final mile or so of the day’s trek to a tiny remote village off the main trail. 

By the time we arrived, the entire population had retired for the night. We knocked tentatively on the door of the cottage with the lone light flickering from a window and signed our needs. The man who greeted us shook his head, then beckoned us to follow him.

We approached another stone cottage and waited in the darkness while he knocked on the door, rousing the owner from her bed. The lone occupant, a gnarled old woman with a heavily lined face and leathery hands from a lifetime of toil, beckoned us into her humble abode. She set about stoking her fire in the middle of the floor and prepared a meal of rice and greens. After the meal she silently gestured for us to bed down by the fire and retired to her own bedroll nearby.

Next morning after a simple breakfast we asked our host if there were any chores that we could help her with. When we learned that she was setting out for a morning of firewood gathering we offered to come along. It took a couple of hours to gather two large bundles of sticks, with nothing available over 1” in diameter. The surrounding area had been scoured for firewood for centuries, requiring ever more diligent searching for a bundle of sticks capable of fuelling the evening cooking and heating fire. 

Our host and I each hoisted a bundle onto our backs, and using traditional head bands to secure them we hiked back to the cottage. When we arrived, our host deftly threw her bundle off her back. When I attempted to mimic her, my bundle tore the entire back out of my well worn Levi denim shirt, to which we all enjoyed a good laugh. 

Shortly thereafter we bid our host farewell and continued on our way. The memory of the trust, kindness and generosity of that dear lady remains with us to this day.

Katandra at Coles Bay - January 1969

                                       Katandra

Excerpt from Sailing - 1957-2025

In the summer of 1969, dad decided to bring Katandra to Coles Bay for our annual summer camping holiday. This was quite logistically challenging, but as always dad was up to the challenge. The prevailing winds in Tasmania are from the South West, and the preferred moorage corner in Cole’s Bay is sheltered from these winds. However periodically, South East gales blow up and the Cole’s Bay moorage is open to these, presenting a lee shore. About half a dozen commercial fishing boats were moored in the bay at that time.

Rather than risk anchoring in Coles Bay for two weeks, dad once again hired Roger Maxfield, this time to help him place a heavy mooring for Katandra. The mooring was assembled from two huge cast iron steam engine wheels recovered from the foundry scrap heap, tethered with a heavy chain yoke. I participated in the placement of the mooring and remember much huffing and puffing as the components were lowered into place.

Then came the task of sailing Katandra up the East Coast of Tasmania to Coles Bay. Friends with offshore sailing and navigating experience were signed on as crew for the trip. Sailing around the outside of the rugged Tasman Peninsula can provide challenging sea conditions, but the option is a short cut through a man made canal at Dunally, which for a deep keeled boat like Katandra has to be negotiated at high tide. We accomplished this and eventually picked up our brand new mooring in Cole’s Bay.

The following week we made our usual pilgrimage by road to the Cole’s Bay camp site and set up our camp. We would row out to Katandra in an 11’ plywood dinghy borrowed from the Harmon family, motor the yacht over to the short fishing dock owned by Roger Maxfield, pick up our passengers for the day and sail the pristine waters of Great Oyster Bay.

Our longest day cruise was to Bryant’s Corner, a delightful South West facing bay close to the southern tip of the Freycinet Peninsula. We had eleven people on board, including dad, mum, brother John, and I. The only other crew member I remember from that day is Geoff Fysh, aged 11 at the time.

After a leisurely sail south, we dropped anchor in Bryant’s Corner and set about enjoying a beautiful sunny day lounging on deck, playing guitars, swimming, snorkelling and paddling the dinghy ashore. Little did we know that we were enjoying the calm before a horrendous storm.

At about 2.00 pm, we noticed a commercial fishing boat making a beeline for Schouten Passage, just to our south, separating Schouten Island from Freycinet Peninsula. The fishing boat suddenly altered course dramatically and veered straight towards us. Slowing a moment to seaward of us, the skipper shouted that unseasonal hurricane force winds had just hit Hobart, 100 miles south, and were wreaking havoc in the city. Our anchorage was badly exposed to the winds and we should leave immediately.

The fetch across Great Oyster Bay from Swansea to the Freycinet peninsula is approximately 10 miles - enough to enable hurricane force winds to whip up very heavy seas. Suddenly our idyllic summer cruise turned into a great drama. We bellowed at those ashore in the dinghy to hurry back to the boat and readied for a quick emergency departure, shortening sail and preparing to hoist anchor. By the time the shore crew arrived, large swells preceding the hurricane were already heaving the foredeck. Dad started the engine and asked me to take in the anchor. We had no anchor winch, so it was challenging work hauling the anchor chain by hand on a now wildly heaving foredeck. We had limited experienced sailors on board - women and young people out for a leisurely cruise. Dad sent all of them below and closed the hatch as we began dealing with the ever increasing wind now screaming in our rigging. We debated turning tail and following the fishing boat that had warned us of the storms approach, through Schouten Passage. However dad reasoned that the building storm surge funnelling through the passage might make for dangerous waves that would cause the dinghy to surf down on our stern, endanger our transom-hung rudder and poop us. So the decision was made to claw our way off shore, motor sailing directly into the storm.

Sea conditions grew so wild that everyone below became violently seasick - everyone except my poor mum, who spent her time reassuring our young passengers and passing buckets from one to the next. At one point the dinghy took on a lot of water and the extra weight caused the deadeye that the tow rope attached to to pull out of the bow. To recover it we had to do a dangerous gybe in true hurricane conditions, sail back to the dinghy and try to secure it. I was assigned to climb into the dingy in the heaving conditions, bail out as much water as possible, attach the tow line to the forward seat (there was nothing else to tie off to) and climb back aboard Katandra.

We got back underway again but the tow line attached to the seat meant that the dinghy no longer towed straight but veered off to the side, taking on more water. Eventually her weight caused the seat to break away and once again we watched the dinghy recede astern. Dad decided that it was too dangerous to attempt another recovery and we would have to write it off.

We clawed our way directly into the storm for about 5 hours before we were able to run before it into Cole’s Bay. I remember being quite nervous as we approached the dock in its confined space but we managed to round up nicely, drop the sails and motor into the more protected waters in the lee of the jetty. We barely had our bow line ashore when young Geoff Fysh virtually walked the tight rope to the dock shouting over his shoulder “Thank you Mr Brand!”

We soon learned that the hurricane had left a trail of devastation across Tasmania. Roofs were torn from many homes and commercial buildings, trees were uprooted and boats sunk. Had it not been for the warning from the passing fisherman, combined with our good seamanship and tenacious sailing, Katandra could certainly have been wrecked on the eastern shore of Freycinet Peninsula and who knows what might have happened to our crew. 

As a strange post script to the adventure, the following day the name plate of the Harmon’s dinghy washed up onto the beach in front of our camp site!

 A few days later a South Easter blew up, threatening our mooring spot. We watched Katandra closely until we decided that the combination of wave action and receding tide was making the mooring unsafe. We rowed out to her, climbed aboard and felt her touching the bottom between waves. We quickly started the engine and motored over to the jetty once again. We discovered later that the two large cast iron wheels of our mooring had not had time to bury themselves in the sand, and dragged together, lessening their effectiveness and now putting the boat too close to the shallowing beach. Unfortunately the mooring was abandoned and we were not able to safely use it again.