Each day had a handful of half-an-hour drives.
It was a halfa to swim in the sea.
A halfa to work.
A halfa to yoga.
A halfa to the pub.
A halfa to visit that mate who had a half an hour free.
That collectively made for a lot of time in the car feeling rather foolish that I drove so much diesel into the sky. It was, however, a choice time to listen to lovely music and daydream of my life to be on the sea. The backbone to these fantasies was a boat that sailed with a sturdy grace through the veins of my being.
I’d been parked up in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales for a number of years working as a carpenter on the boujie abodes scattered around the coast and leaking up through the hills. As the price of rentals increased, my own home zone was pushed further and further inland – away from the ocean.
So you can see my dreams a little clearer now: to put a halt to this western march, at least for my fishy soul, which was growing dusty and sooky.
I’d always hungered for a boat. I was and still am cursed with romanticism, which saw me fall foul prey to the internet venues luring dreamers such as mwah into buying the second-hand hopes of a life in the enchanted sea – that is to say, I began the search.
I would not settle for a purely functional vessel, for this I believe is one of our great fuck-ups of modernity. Ornamental curves, colours and textures are a resting place for our souls to be at ease in and with a human-made object. The boat must be with life of its own, or I’ll truly be alone.
My internet search grew obsessive: I was trawling and calling the owners of vessels out of my league from Fremantle to Cairns, over to Kiwi land and down south to lutruwita/Tasmania. Yes, I was for a time a hull kicker talking the learned dialect of a “boaty” in the hope of forward momentum bearing a fortuitous outcome.
Too many months absconded my life, plus the floods came roaring down from the heavens and tore apart the show and swallowed my job. It was easy enough to rattle my plans into action. I quit my fluffy online search and fanged on a whim to Tasmania – for “down there”, the sea demanded a boat to be strong and capable, and there were others with my curse.
It was there that I first laid eyes on Brolga. I’ll spare you the hoodoo-voodoo fairylike moments of our meeting – though you must know that it was rather uncanny the way it all came to be.
‘Brolga’ – the finest creature in all of Oyster Cove – was now under my care and I hers. A masterfully built timber 32-ft, beamy, canoe stern, cutter-rigged sloop with a welcoming teak deck, ready for adventure on the sea. I sold my car and my little dive boat and mustered any savings I had around the traps to cover her dowry.
Spring was in fifth gear, the township of Kettering where Brolga rested with all the other dreamy boats smelled of bush honey blossoms, nostalgic lanolin and the tangy saltwater plants rotting sweetly in the sun at high tide mark. I couldn’t shake the grin from my hairy face – a little like that stupid grin people wear when luck rained them a cute lover, and they’re bouncily walking home after the first night.
The island of Tasmania that I’ve loved and feared for all of my adult life has a coastline so divine it seems the veil between this world and that washes over the edge into a whirling pool of awe.
From the sea, I longed to hear the waves pounding those cliffs and rolling stones up the shore, those strong-willed trees gripping boulders in the talons of their roots howling the great sculpture’s cry in the Roaring Forties.
I am not a “boaty”. I am a water person looking for the avenues to reach a sensation of my truth. To dodge the bullshit and swim in a world that holds more than most of us care to fathom.
We all want that authentic feeling, and where that comes from and what ushers it forth is different for you as it is for me. One ingredient that all the recipes have in common, I’ve noticed, is a pinch of “move slowly and gently attempt simplicity”.
Though, my riotous stance aboard Brolga’s bow – with her full bellied red sails galloping over the southern swells – gave me a tickle in the throat: not a forewarning of my immune system being compromised, but a warning of loneliness.
All the geographical beauty and mystic moments fill me brimming with love for this planet. Here and there, pockets of acceptance and oneness I crave; mostly, it occurs with another. A kelp forest with cathedral beams of sun penetrating the watery underworld, with lurking giant squid pulsing and eyeing me with a clever light. An octopus with a head the same size as mine, its inquisitive, serpentine limbs touching my fingertip and looking into my soul.
You should never dive alone, but it feels so good. Calling in a lungful of air after slowing my heart rate… holding a breath from up above and carrying it down as softly as my watery movements can. The pressure as I descend past the kelp forest into a darker blue feels as though it disperses the breath out into my limbs. Drenched in euphoria, I lie resting on my belly, my focus falling over a patch of sea floor the size of my hand; time is at this stage very… very slow. Infinite worlds are in that small patch: flower gardens and snail kitchens, colour schemes like candy fireworks in gelatinous shapes. Orange into brown, glowing blues with zigzag stripes of lime green, soft cloudy white spheres spotted red with lighting streaks of yellow velvet.
I had known these moments, the togetherness. Not a viewer on a platform or audience to a screen, but a part of the fantastic mess. Often, I catch myself thinking or feeling like a simple external observer, and perhaps that’s what we’ve become – but there’s always a string of memory that flies in the wind like spider’s web connecting the whole lot of us to the beating heart of Earth.
These moments were mint, a paternal reminder and euphoric to boot, but I was still lonely. There were no paintings or pictures in Brolga: just the six round brass portholes framing the world.
On anchor south of Bruny Island, hiding from a staunch Sou’wester, I’d finished my book and discovered I was out of rice and also kimchi, cheese, wine, human touch and conversation. The time had arrived to make way for Hobart and do that other life a while.
Yarns! What joy to overcome the awkward initial stumbles out of my solitude and hear of others’ lives unravelling like those stones taking shape at the shoreline. Settling in town a while, I made an effort to be social – which doesn’t always work out, but this time it did, as a small and delightfully patchy circle of friends emerged. One shiny night, I found myself on a house party dance floor relieved by tequila, dancing with no inhibitions, and with beautiful friendly smiles and hearts holding my hands and I theirs.
The next morning, my head swam with revelations and memories of old revelations; actually, it seems I’m forever remembering how precious human relationships are and how they make a place feel even moreso than its Jurassic make up.
People need people as much as we need water. It’s the good smile with a stranger that holds all the nourishing truth.
Kind regards.
Photos by Daniel Von Kritter, Matt Rabbidge and the author.
