Grateful for the Best of All Worlds

We are nearing the end of our time at our home at Shamballa, Boggy Creek and I am filled with many mixed emotions.  It has been great to reconnect with family and friends and the land around Bellingen.  But it is sad to leave this bit of paradise and all who inhabit her.  Despite all the hard work of slashing back the bush and doing repairs and maintenance over the last 5 months, this time has been very special.  So thank you all Australian family, friends, flora and fauna for reaffirming that no matter how far we roam, we will still call Australia home.

Our humble abode

Spending much too short of time with our wonderful sons, Peter and Patrick

Good times on Shamballa

Wood-fired pizza by chef extraordinaire, Wendy

Remembering those no longer with us

Catching up with Mark at his new home

A great visit with Thea and Dave

 

 

Sprouting mushrooms below the Tallowood tree

Our friendly goanna

Now that we are fortified and comforted by our good fortune of having Bellingen to return to, a very special privilege indeed, we can continue our sailing with renewed purpose.  There will be more hellos and goodbyes with their bittersweet transience, new experiences and challenges, lots of work and lots of fun as we continue learning from life’s unexpected meanderings.

 

The Nasties of the Bush

Bellingen is very beautiful.  Our co-op, Shamballa, is nestled in a lush sub-tropical forest where the water from Boggy Creek is crystal clear and vibrantly plumed birds flit through the massive forest giants.  It is a little bit of paradise.  But this paradise has its Nasties and over the last few weeks we have had a few close encounters with them.

Yellow tailed black cockatoo in the tree tops

Snakes:  I don’t mind snakes.  When growing up, my brother use to constantly catch snakes, bring them home and we would play with them.  I particularly remember a very pretty ring neck snake that we had in a terrarium for a long time.  But I am frightened of poisonous snakes and in Australia that means most snakes.  Pythons are okay.  Tree snakes are very pretty.  But anything else and I want to be as far away as possible.

So in our first weeks here I was quite happy to see a tree snake in the rafters on the veranda.  When a python went in front of our neighbours car it was fun to have a look and urge it back into the bush.  Then when a smaller python took up residence in a cement block in our retaining wall outside the kitchen, I felt as if we had a pet and said hello to it every day.

Python across the driveway

Our 'pet' python in the cement block

I was not feeling so friendly when while I was shovelling wood chips into a wheelbarrow one shovelful contained a red belly black snake.  I let out a shriek and Bob came running.  The snake had buried itself deep under the wood chips in the wheel barrow.  Bob gingerly shovelled through to find it.  It poked it head up trying to slither out of the wheelbarrow coming right for me.  Bob instinctively went whack with the back of the shovel and we instantly had a headless snake.  For Bob, revenge was sweet.  A red belly black snake put Bob in hospital about 29 years ago.  The creepy thing was that the headless body of the snake continued to wiggle and writhe for about 30 minutes.  Yuck!

The black snake in the wheel barrow

The headless snake still wriggling. It was only a small one so yes, I do feel a bit guilty....

Leeches:  These little slimy creatures use to plague us when we lived here before.  Often we would not be aware that one had latched on to our ankle or in between our toes until we had taken off our socks and found them soaked in blood.  Or we would see an engorged body slithering across the floor.  Then we would call out to everyone to check their ankles to see if they were bleeding, or if they had any other of these pests sucking their blood.  

The best way to remove them is to sprinkle them with salt and they instantly fall off.  If there is no salt you have to grab them and pull them off your skin.  They are extremely slimy and it is almost impossible to get a grip plus they are firmly attached.  Pulling them off is not a fun process at all.   When I first moved to Bellingen in the late 1980’s, I was totally repulsed by these creatures.  But, as with anything you get use to them and now I am merely annoyed when they make an appearance.

Fortunately leeches seem to be in the decline here and in the 4 months that we have been back I have only had one encounter.  (It has been very dry here which may account for their scarcity.)  The worse part, besides bleeding for many minutes after the slimy thing is off, is that the bite itches for days.

File photo of an attached leech

Argh Lantana!  We see lantana everywhere in the Mediterranean.  There it is a pretty little flowering shrub adorning front gardens.  Here in the sub-tropics it turns into a monster.  Its scratchy branches tangle and twist taking over whole hillsides.  We spent the first few months here slashing back the lantana and my forearms were covered in scratches.  Then we found a better way to get rid of the large clumps.  We tie rope around the root base (bow lines and clove hitches are not just for boats) and pull huge clumps out of the earth using our trusty Troopie workhorse.  It takes just a few minutes.  Very satisfying!

The pretty flowers of a lantana

A monster clump of lantana

For all the Nasties, I must admit that this beautiful little corner of Australia still comes off as a bit of paradise.

View from our veranda overlooking the dam in a rain storm

What Next?

There were many reasons why we returned to our house in Australia, unpacked and settled in.  Primarily we wanted to see our sons and renew friendships.  We also needed to take care of various bureaucratic and medical issues and after renting our house for four years, the house was due for some maintenance.  We have also been taking advantage of now having a residential address and stocking up on all those items we can get cheaply on eBay – not something we could do when we had no fixed address.

Visiting the boys in Canberra

 

But niggling away in the back of our minds was the big question of what next?  We have been travelling on land and sea for nearly 5 years.  We have sailed in the Mediterranean for 4 years, mainly in Greece and Turkey, and loved it.  Is it time now to put down roots again at Shamballa and embrace the tree change life?  Or should we continue sailing in the Mediterranean, going back to Greece and Turkey after we explore Sardinia, Spain and Portugal this year?  Or should we continue sailing west and make the big leap across the Atlantic to the Caribbean?  

This?

Or this?

Or across the pond?

There was no eureka moment but gradually the answer sneaked up on us and one day we found ourselves signing up for the ARC+ Rally for this November.  The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) is a well established rally run by the World Cruising Club.  The rally was first organised by the sailing great, Jimmy Cornell, in 1986.  The rally concept has expanded and the World Cruising Club now organises rallies around the world, in Europe and the USA.

 

In the main ARC over 200 boats cross the Atlantic in loose convoy leaving from the Canary Islands in mid-November and arriving at Saint Lucia in the Caribbean before Christmas.  The 2700 nautical mile journey generally takes about 20 days.  

We have signed up for the smaller ARC+ Rally.  This rally of about 70 boats flagged from more than 15 nations leaves from the Canary Islands and goes first to the Cape Verde Islands, a sail of about 6 days.  After a few days layover sightseeing and socialising, the convoy continues across the Atlantic to St Vincent in the Caribbean which usually takes about 14 days.  The route is slightly longer than the main ARC, about 3000 nm, but is broken up into a shorter time period continuously at sea.  Plus it goes to Cape Verde, an appealing destination off the beaten track.

The start of the ARC+ a few years ago

Destination St Vincent

We are only on the waiting list for the rally but are hopeful that we will get a place as some tend to sign up early, just in case, and then drop out.  We also still need 2 more crew to help with the watches.  Anyone interested??  

So in between the maintenance chores and socialising while at Bellingen, we are buying pilot guides and spare parts off eBay and thinking about getting back to our westward sailing in April/May.

 

 

Reflections on Milford and Bellingen

I have sometimes mused on how as adults we, quite unconsciously, make a home base for ourselves that is similar to our childhood home.  I grew up in Milford NJ, a small town on the Delaware River.  Our house was on acreage just outside town situated on a hill with a long driveway, woodland and lots of fruit trees.  Now on the other side of the world I find myself in Bellingen NSW, a small town on the Bellinger River.  Our house is on acreage just outside town situated on a hill with a long driveway in a forest and lots of fruit trees.  On my mother’s first visit in 1988, she remarked how much our home in Bellingen reminded her of our place in Milford.

Main Street Milford

The entrance to Honeysuckle Lane.  The building on the left use to be the public library.  My favourite place to go.

Main Street Bellingen

Our house on the hill

However instead of 3.5 acres of freehold land as in Milford we are on 640 acres of shared co-operative land.  Instead of apple, cherry, pear and chestnut trees we have orange, lemon, mandarin, mango, guava, lychee, coffee and macadamia trees.

Mandarins which will be ready to eat in May

Our mango tree but no fruit this year

We had a great lychee crop this year

Ripe coffee beans ready to be processed

Hopefully we will get some macadamia nuts this year if the cockatoos don't eat them all first

Instead of a pine forest with grackles providing a deafening cacophony in the evening and white tail deer timidly grazing on the edges, we have a sub-tropical rainforest with yellow tailed black cockatoos and rainbow lorikeets making a racket during the day and frogs croaking all night while wallabies timidly graze on the edge of the forest.

Yellow tailed black cockatoo

Colourful Rainbow lorikeet

Wallaby or as our daughter use to call the 'wobblelies'

 As a child I would spend hours exploring the woods, climbing along the shale cliffs of the Narrows and playing in the Quequacamisicon Creek (which now seems to be called Hakihokake Creek) searching for salamanders.  As an adult I spend hours walking through the rain forest marvelling at the 30m trees and taking refreshing dips in the swimming hole at Boggy Creek while hoping to see the resident platypus.

A bush track near our house

The swimming hole at Boggy Creek

So have I come full circle with an Antipodean twist?  In any event I feel extremely fortunate to have had a life spent in such beautiful places.

A view of our house from the dam