Trani was lovely, a pretty town but not overrun with tourists. We are now on Lefkas which is the island next to Kefalonia. Last night we slept in Kerenza, our chartered sail boat moored besides a taverna in Sivota.

We are all completing practical Royal Yacht Association sailing qualifications. Fiona our skipper has not given us a moment’s break, we have been very busy. So, now it’s almost 11pm and we have sailed from Lefkas to Kefalonia. Tonight we are in Fiskardho, a very fancy little Greek town. It’s full of yachts and gin palaces with well dressed tourists spending lavishly … not really my style but I loved sailing today.

Oddly enough on the voyage over here we passed one of our old neighbours from Lowertown. Justin Danby, he was on another boat going in the opposite direction. We messaged each other after passing. What a coincidence!

Leaving Broken Hill

Here I go again - visiting the home of my first 20 years, Cornwall.
I went this time last year as soon as the flights had resumed after all that covid bullshit. I flew home and caught covid at the Blue Anchor. I had never been as sick. It really messed me up for a while. My family have always teased me for being a cry-baby and that visit was no different. I returned to Broken Hill feeling ripped off. I’ve spent the past year wanting to buy a boat and sail away. My itch to travel is just stupid.

I am taking my time, there is no hurry. Today I flew two hours from Broken Hill to Sydney. Tomorrow night I’ll fly 30 odd hours to London. I have not booked my return, yet. I will return to Broken Hill when I’m done.

A map of St Anthony

As a child, shortly after I had lost my golden mantle of ‘the-youngest’, my father would take my two brothers and I to St Anthony. My Dad had made several ‘shrimping nets’ which we would push around knee deep in the cold numbing, esturine water. We would catch tiny shrimps amongst the muddy seaweed. The smell of the mud comes back to me as I write this. We would tear bunches of mussels off the rocks and cook them in old tins of brine over makeshift fires. Often we were startled by crabs leaping and scuttling out from the rocks and weeds. On some occaisons we would rent a fishing boat from ‘Sailaway’ and putter out past all the moored day sailers, dinghies and fishing boats to The Manacles.

In later years my Dad went through a few boats of his own. His last was a huge old clinker built fishing boat which he shared with Reg our neighbour. In my memory those boats were never as satisfying as the crab boats we rented from Sailaway. With one exception, a small rowing boat we owned for a couple of years called, ‘Snip’.

I’m guessing this was in 1978 or 9 - Our little rowing boat, ‘Snip’

‘Sailaway’ is a name I have always linked to St Anthony with its mudlocked salt smell. Like most of my fathers dealings renting a boat involved a lengthy chat, in this case with Sailaway’s proprieter. A worried looking man who I had always presumed was called Anthony, obviously dropping the Saint moniker to avoid showing off. It is only now that it occurs to me, I was probably mistaken. I quite liked half listening to them talk about their respective travails. Business in Cornwall in the 1970’s was apparently not good and (Saint) Anthony might have to close down or sell up. Other customers would be coming and going everyone had a story and seemed to know each other. One time, standing up to the knees holding a shrimp net, my Dad met a fellow he had not seen since he was schoolboy. I excitedly thought this would unlock tales from my Dad of his adventures when he was my age but he just said, “Well, we weren’t really best of friends”.

East of St Anthony lies The Manacles (Mên-aver Point)

Out at The Manacles I caught mackeral on a feathered line. I was too little to pull them in by myself. There would be 5 or 6 of them flashing blue and silver on my line, my brothers or my Dad would spring in to take over in case I lost them. The first fish I reeled in myself was an orange gurnard, all gills and spines. My Dad thought I should throw it back but I refused. With a sack half full of fish and the afternoon sun on our cheeks my Dad turned us back into St Anthony. He would chat to everyone again as he was returning the boat. Us boys would wander up ahead to the Pay’n’Display car park stopping at the damson bushes to fill our pockets and mouths with the deliciously tart wild plums. We drove back through Manaccan with frequent stops to reverse back. The single lane roads were sign-posted on the wider sections with the words, Passing Place. Often with the first P scraped off. I don’t know why I mention this except that it say’s a lot about the era I was to grow up in.

My Dad would stop at the old misnamed New Inn at Manaccan. If my father met someone he knew we might get a lemonade whilst he had a chat and a beer. We never stayed too long as we normally had our catch in the car. I never remember the journey back from Manaccan, I think I would fall asleep until our bumpy lane woke me up. Carthvean was a warm and cosy house back then, always a lovely place to go home to. My Mum grilled my gurnard in hot melted butter that night. It was the first time I ate fish without complaining about the bones which is funny if you know about all the spiny little bones in a gurnard.

A Gurnard from the internet, much the same as the one I first caught

Fourteen or so years later I was a few miles as the-cormorant-flies north-west of Sailaway in Falmouth. I had met a fellow called Carsten Rassmussen who offered me passage on his boat in exchange for taking watches. That day I sailed out of Falmouth, past the Manacles, southwards and away from Cornwall.

It has been over thirty years since I left and there is not a day that I don’t miss home. The sea does not smell the same in Australia. My oldest brother told me not dwell in the past. He once said said, “Have one more look through all your old photo’s; notebooks; letters and other junk then shove it in a box and put it away and never look at it again”. He gave a short joyless laugh after he told me. Obviously I mostly ignored his advice, but maybe he’s right.

Carsten Rassmussen’s boat in Madiera 1991

Although I have no photo’s from that first voyage I do have this sketch I did after crossing the Bay of Biscay. I cannot even remember the name of the boat. In my defence I did not enjoy sailing with Carsten and I suspect the feeling was mutual. We were both too polite to say anything but I changed to another boat at the first opportunity. I read and reread the books I took with me on that journey. Oscar Wilde’s collection of short stories, “The Happy Prince and other Tales” was the only one that has stayed with me. I spent a day or two floating around some caves and rockpools and wrote this with the shadow of the Happy Prince in mind.

There was also this letter which I never got round to finishing or sending addressed to my Aunt Joanna. I am hopeless at sending letters.

My Mum sent me this postcard after she had walked across Spain. It is an illustration from a Russian Fairy story, “Feather Of Finist Falcon” by Ivan Bilibin.

Feather Of Finist Falcon by Ivan Bilibin

I am reading Robert MacFarlane‘s, “The Old Ways, A Journey On Foot”. I love it. I have had to regularly pause so that I could tangentially read about the characters MacFarlane cites.

For example the hale and hearty George Borrow who spoke twelve languages, as a young man, and went on to learn many more on his travels. He had a particular affinity for his fellow nomads the Romany. George appears to have walked the length and breadth of Ireland, Europe and Russia on beer, milk and bread-rolls.

MacFarlane’s descriptions of the highways, pathways and hollow-ways of England and Europe make me miss the land I grew up in. I suspect he and other writers like him inspired the trend for ‘Wild Places’ I noticed when I was last in the UK.

When I last visited my Mum I remember there was a ‘Wild Runners’ group in Totnes. Lacking literary pretensions as a kid we always called it ‘Cross Country’. Nonetheless I tried to join the Totnes ‘Wild Runners’ but nobody turned up. I went for a run anyway, it wasn’t very wild. I ended it with a freezing and life affirming swim in the Dart.

I believe my Mum and my beloved nieces are regular ‘Wild Swimmers’. How I would love to join them. Instead I have the late Roger Deakin‘s book, “Waterlogged” which has taken me on a varied splash through the waterways of the British Isles. Australia is not the home of the first half of my life but it has provided me with endless adventures for swimming (cycling and walking).

This is young H watching a helicopter in a bay in Vanuatu. Most decidedly not the Dart

The weather in my part of the world is generally delightfully warm which makes the cool water so much more inviting. I love to swim and dive beneath the surface, imagining myself transforming, like Kay Harker from “The Box of Delights” … into a fish:

… there in the coolness and dimness, wavering as the water wavered, and feeling a cold spring gurgling up just underneath them and tickling their tummies.

Streams of light and water are truly sublime.