Where's Roger

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The entrance to Sydney Harbour is flanked by two great sandstone bulwarks that are called somewhat obviously South Head and North Head. South Head is the shorter of the twins and although not as high above the pounding water below is a favourite place for some sad and disturbed folk to hurl themselves off. My particular view of this activity is that it is just overwhelmingly sad that someone, anyone who would do such a thing simply has lost the strength to protect those who love them. Somebody does and that somebody is the one that bears the brunt of the sadness and despair of the suicide.

Some of our business in this article is connected with the edifice known as North head. The terrible theme of suicide has also some relevance too. We all do foolish things, me probably more than most, certainly when I was younger which of course encompasses anywhere within the last sixty two years. Having said that it is also it is fair to say, I was not particularly dangerous to myself or others for the first five or six years, unless of course you count very messy faecal episodes or the dangers of projectile vomiting.

There is a wonderful lagoon at Wattamolla Beach in NSW which is situated south of Sydney in the Royal National Park. The beach itself is typical of an Australian beach and will not be found wanting in golden sands as it sits neatly between two gracious headlands that face stoically east. The lagoon is mostly fed by a creek which eventually empties into the lagoon over a picturesque waterfall. The waterfall has always been a place for daring do as people gird their loins and make the ten or so metre leap into the tannin stained water below.
The beach itself joins the land to the sea at the end of a small inlet. The beach precinct is surrounded by walking trails and boasts a wonderful lagoon, which taken in by the discerning eye might give rise to the images of a film set about castaways and young love amidst idyllic settings. Every few years after the creek dwindles, the marvelous lagoon is cut off from its parent sea by the golden sands of the beach. Mother nature will reunite the lagoon and the sea, by creating higher than normal tides or causing the rainfall to swell the creeks and the brackish water will flow again across the sand at the southern edge of the beach.

It was not until I was about six when my predisposition for danger was somehow directed to watery places, like lagoons. where I was doing the usual running away from my carers, usually Mum, and giggling fit to beat the band when my Mother was distracted to a particularly strapping young man stretching his bronzed muscles nearby, caught both her eye and her attention. It appears I took this opportunity to run headlong into the lagoon and begin to drown. Mum never did have a particularly large span of attention or the man wandered off someplace and naturally she returned her gaze to her errant baby boy, only problem was, he was in fact nowhere to be seen. “Let's see he was running toward the water and the young man took off his shirt and Roger is not in sight”, running toward the water was the clue and Mum sprang into action with more speed than seemed possible and raced fully dressed into the briny Wattamolla lagoon.

She found her little boy still giggling madly as he blundered away under the water with little giggle bubbles shooting out of his mouth. I was also told, on another visit to Wattamolla a few years later that a child was taken by a shark from the same lagoon, little did I know until now that this was my Mum's way to discourage me from swimming there on a wet blustery day. It was only while researching a fact for this article that I found this was a work of fiction on my mother's part.

I did have a curious episode in another lagoon about six years later in Terrigal Lagoon, where I once kissed a lovely girl under an overturned canoe, I was never sure which one of us actually tipped the canoe over but it was a nice first kiss with this particular girl. This is not the curious episode though, that was on another day and another canoe. This time a friend and I, a mate, a soccer team member and definitely not for kissing, were paddling around away from the swimming area and a large shadow moved under the craft. It was a shark a large shark, thankfully for us a large dead shark, but it scared the heck out of us at the time.

So Wattamolla was my first brush with a watery end. My next one was when my brothers decided to help me to learn to swim on top of the water which unless you are Jacques Cousteau is the recommended method. Up until this time my own personal style was beneath the surface and flailing around with eyes tightly shut. It was very important to sink entirely to the bottom to gain purchase with my feet to push myself skyward and a gulp of reviving air.

My brothers threw me into thee deep end on the North Sydney Swimming pool in 1954. This coincidentally was the year of the Melbourne Olympic Games, the first ever in Australia, I would have loved to have gone and compete, but my technique and age was against me. My brothers did not allow me out of the deep end of the North Sydney Swimming Pool until I able to convert floundering under water to floundering on the surface. They had figured I wouldn't be able to sink to the bottom and push off for the surface as it was sixteen feet deep. As it turns out they were right.

The next time danger raised its head was about a year later when my brothers and I went to a fresh water tributary of the Lane Cove River a creek fed large water hole called The Crystal. I walked, as apparently I do, into danger by wandering over an unseen ledge and promptly got my leg snagged underwater about two and a half metres down. This was not a recommended way to continue breathing as I was about one point two metres tall at the time. Once again I was rescued, this time by my brother Peter.

The next few episodes were all of my own making, of my own stupidity actually. The last couple of years of high school way back then were also the beginnings of the surfing culture and lots of lads were bleaching their hair and stomping was the latest dance craze. I didn't bleach but I was a great stomper. On those days when school seemed a poor option a few of us would hitch hike to Long Reef Beach using the golf links shortcut.

We were all keen body surfers and when Long Reef was on it was truly a wonderful place with both left and right cuts, on long glassy swells. At low tide and with a large wave, it wasn't that hard to get cut up on the reef and the many rocky shoals if you made the wrong choice of wave to attack. If you get the chance visit Long reef, but don't do as we did and leave the golfers alone as they wander around following the little white ball.

On one of these illegal excursions from our beloved high school, a mate, Daffy by nickname and Daffy by nature, and I decided to make the trip to Manly Beach. We changed out of our school uniforms at back of the bus shed, and caught buses to

Manly. Why we had decided to go to the beach on a wild, wet and wintery day is the subject of a debate about how truly stupid one can be when one is fourteen years old. Is it hormonal, plain stupidity or willful disobedience, I personally lean toward good old fashioned stupidity with a pinch of inexperience.

Daffy and I were basking in the cold rain as we discovered the beach had been closed due to the bad weather and the huge waves were rolling in at North Steyne beach, which the minds of the paid Beach Inspectors of the day considered far to dangerous for swimming. Naturally Daffy who was also a rather smaller fellow to go along with his general Daffyness, and I must admit, I agreed with him, that we were not run of the mill swimmers but gifted body surfers. Just how we had come to this conclusion and
general delusion has never been explained, but we decided to go in and 'ride,ride,ride the wild surf as the Jan and Dean sang in those days.

Interestingly Manly Beach was named by Captain Arthur Phillip who was actually appointed Admiral as he was Governor General of the Colony of NSW, for whatever the reason he is best remembered as Captain Arthur Phillip. While this erstwhile gentleman was scouting the shores of Sydney Harbour, he came across members of the Jay-ye-my clan of the local Guringai people. He was admiring the stature and apparent strength of the men of the group, when one of their number took exception of this pale fellow with the funny hat, and promptly threw a spear at him which sat quivering in Arthur Phillips's shoulder. Much to his credit the pale one ordered the other pale fellows he was with, their hats were not so funny, not to retaliate. He was so impressed with the Jay-ye-my darker fellows, that we called the place Manly.

Manly is surrounded on three sides by water, it is in fact a classic isthmus with the narrow neck of land connecting the area known as North Head and the rest of Australia via the northers beaches. So in this wonderful place we have the Tasman Sea on one side and beautiful Sydney Harbour on the other , the third side is, what for many is their first experience of continental Australia, the Sydney Harbour Heads, which is a narrow stretch of water that forms the entrance to the harbour itself .

The southern end of the beach itself was considered Manly Beach and further north on the same stretch of sand are South Steyne, Mid Steyne and as you may have guessed North Steyne the last name to be given on the northernmost part of the golden granules is known as Queenscliffe.

For whatever reason, no doubt foolish, we decided to enter the potentially treacherous water at Mid Steyne, the beach was closed and deserted and the surf was pounding, we became separated almost immediately. The hardest part of body surfing is getting beyond the take off zone. The surfer must get past all the broken water to be able to eyeball the next wave or the sets as it forms further out to sea. This allows the body surfer to get to the most promising spot to catch the wave before it crests and use the power of the water along with a few really hard strokes to whiz you down and along the wave. It really is the most exhilarating feeling and I can understand the way many people wax lyrical about the spirituality of it all.

As for the day Daffy and I took on the Mid Steyn surf. I went as hard as I could and within about fifteen minutes I was 'out the back', trouble was I was out the back alone, no Daffy.

I called and coo-eed and yelled, but no Daffy, I swam in a bit, no Daffy, out a bit, no Daffy and finally went way out to see if I could see him as I lifted myself up on the cresting swells, no Daffy. I was becoming very very concerned, for some reason and, quite incorrectly of course, I felt responsible and as I considered myself a strong swimmer I felt I should find the little guy before something awful happened. While I floundering around looking for Daffy I noticed on the far off shore a crowd of people forming. Some them were pointing out toward the dumping swells and for some reason I felt they were trying to point toward the missing Daffy.

I swam around calling him between ducking from the large waves. I was now opposite Queenscliffe the northerly aspect of the whole Manly beach. I was becoming very tired and if I didn't get in soon I would be swept around the headland and who knows where my dead body would be swept up. Incidentally I was with some guys when a body was found jammed in some rocks at freshwater right around that same headland a couple of months before.

I struggled in and that took at least another ten minutes, the small crowd on the beach seemed to move south with me as I came closer to shore and let the natural wave action wash me in. I expected to be told the worst when I staggered out of the water and people came rushing toward me. At the front of them all was Hmm! you guessed it... Daffy.

It turns out he decided at the first watery hurdle to go in and watch me as I battled the elements, I wasn't sure if I should hug him or hit him, but I decided, we should clear off fast before the Police Rescue Squad became involved.

Daffy told me the Beach Inspector was considering calling them as he wasn't going to go after the stupid bastard out there. I received a justified telling off although I felt I was in control most of the time at least foolish, foolish boy.

About a year later when I was approaching fifteen, I had the exquisite pleasure of surfing the Bommy at Queenscliffe. A bommy is the shortened name for a bombora which is a reef generated swell that caused wave action under certain circumstance. The Queenscliffe bombora doesn't form often and when it does on the rare occasion it does it comes up from the sea floor about a kilometre off the shores of Queenscliffe. The conditions for its activity are generally storms off shore and combined with certain tidal and prevailing wind conditions can throw up the most perfect waves. The bommy throws up huge perfectly formed waves with plenty of power in them to push the surfer, body surfer or board rider thrusting forward back toward the far off shore. The waves are often superbly glassy as they rely on conditions generated from maybe hundreds of miles away.

It was the summer of '63' and I decided to tackle the Queenslcliffe bommy if I ever got the chance. It did come a month or so later and I started swimming out to join the half dozen or so truly expert and experienced surfer dudes who took on the daunting challenge. So out I went once again alone.

The swim out is fairly ordinary once you are past the normal surfing area. Strangely the bommy when it appears is no guarantee of large swells on shore. It is really like swimming out at sea which I suppose it was. The actual surf break on this day was about four metres over the falls that is the wave height at the time of water cresting. To get past this, which is in fact thousands of tons of churning rushing water it is best to swim around the take off area and approach it from behind.

To surf the bommy is in fact a commitment from the surfer, to not only get there, it is a kilometre swim plus edging the break area, and there is no use putting in this effort if one doesn't catch a wave. The sets do not come in all the time so it is quite usual to wait out there treading water for extended periods waiting for the right wave. I hasten to add not the biggest wave as it is no use to get smashed if the wave is unsuitable to ride. So a surfer can wait up to half an hour for the conditions to be right and when they are, heaven on a stick.

As I approached all the other insane half dozen I noticed they were all considerably older than I was, I was conscious of such things at the time, all had on terry toweling hats and were plastered with zinc cream to stop burning the face during the wait between opportunities. Not for me, I didn't know better, I was fourteen.

The next set was upon us as I maneuvered behind them, trouble was they all caught the third or so monster coming across the submerged reef before I could get to the take off zone. I watched in awed dismay as I saw them all slide over the falls and they were lost to my sight as they all zoomed beach ward. It turns out they all knew each other and had decided to go in on the next available wave. Being expert surfers that is exactly what they did.

Luckily this was before the Steven Spielberg classic movie Jaws. So there I was folks, first time on the bommy, all alone, with a kilometres of seawater between me and safety, all alone, with the bommy pounding as the last of the set went past me to go crashing and swirling toward the shore. Did I mention I was all alone, naturally there was a time delay between sets so I spent the next twenty minutes waiting for the next set with my head under the water looking to see what was down there. Some of my time was spent watching the sets generate to the perfect wave and after an eternity of waiting, here they came. I took the third on offer, I had watched from the beach for half an hour before venturing out and the third wave was usually the best formed.

All I can say now some forty eight years later was that was the best few moments of watery delight in my life. Sheer exhilaration, sheer beauty and grace, sliding down an almost vertical wall of green glassy heaven, bugger the sharks. The wave allowed me to ride its forward edge as if we were friends, I think I cut back at least twice maybe three times keeping the white foamy leading edge just behind my left shoulder. After what seemed an eternity the wave petered out but not before it allowed me to suck out the marrow of its glory.

After stopping any forward progress I tumble turned off in my delight and continued the swim for shore, which was now only about 800 yards away. So by my reckoning which is no doubt not accurate I went in about 100 or so yards from going over the falls but the real thrill of such a ride was that I had transversed maybe another hundred yards sideways. Simply wonderful. I was not so foolhardy as to turn around and try it again, all alone.

The northern end of the Manly isthmus is North Head and although south Head has the reputation for sad ends the Norh Head has its fair share of dangers to life and limb. Quite a number of deaths occur by fishing off the rocks as the waves crash against the sandstone cliffs. The cliffs are over thirty metres high in mostly sheer sandstone walls.

In places the cliffs appear to stand on tables of sandstone and the waves smash against the forward edge and sweep across the flat surfaces of the sandstone table.
The tables fall off again at water level and are a perfect habitat for the fishy dwellers of these swirling and dangerous depths. At North Head there is one particular spot that offers the sports fisherman the very best chance of catching a whopper and an awful chance of ending his life.

My elder brother Peter introduced me to this spot which on refection is not a nice place and not worth the bragging rights of catching that same whopper. The place is named 'The Murk'

First danger to get past is the climb down which includes a bit of rock hopping, traversing and repelling down a large but well worn rope tied to a rusting stake driven into the rock face. The climb is rather daunting but I was with my brother at the time and naturally the machismo of the moment took over and against my own thoughts of self preservation down I went with half a ton of fishing gear. How on earth one climbs back up with all this gear and a haul of fish is a minor miracle in itself, but bragging rights hold a strong grip on the rock fisherman’s ideology.

When and if you make it down safely you are now confronted with the raw sea and the power it has to swallow you whole and completely, I can understand how prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared in rough conditions at Cheviot Beach in Victoria in 1967. The next danger to face after leaving your tackle high and dry is to make it to the waters swirling edge across the flat table of rock.

Not many Sydneysiders know that there is a sewerage facility at the top of the cliff and an outfall tunnel blasted vertically from the top and turning into a horizontal tunnel below sea level. Now we all know the powers that be never, ever, ever allow raw sewerage to go from the citizens home, or wherever it may be introduced into the system to end up in the Pacific Ocean. They would never, ever, ever allow that to happen in the mid seventies and yet on certain days a brown streak can be observed emanating with some degree of suspicion from the cliffs co-incidentally where the outfall of treated perfectly,completely treated ex sewerage enters the sea.

The brown streak generally follows a thirty degree path on its northward journey to dissipate a few miles off Sydney’s northern beaches. The increase in protein in the water is what makes such large fish inhabit the underwater caves and nooks and crannies, which the sports fisherman craves. I wouldn’t recommend eating the fat fellows though. The increased protein also causes the next danger to be faced, the slime that treacherously coats the rocks. Most rocks are covered with some degree of water weeds and they are often slippery but this is exaggerated by the slime factor of the murk.

A fisherman must wear climbing cleats on the shoes or boots to ensure some form of, at least surer footing. Every year the bodies of rock fishermen are found floating off the waters around Sydney and they have been washed off rocks because they were not using cleats on their footwear.

There are also has additional dangers for the rock fisherman at The Murk. Between the cliff face and the waters edge is a channel, through which occasionally rush waves which have hit the cliff wall forty or so metres off to the south. The fisherman must watch the waves in front of him for that 'rogue bastard' that seems to come from nowhere and he must hold on for dear life if it decides to sweep over the slimy rocks on which he is standing.

The channel behind him can fill up with swirling foamy death as it rushes from where the water enters it, forty metres south and hits him from behind as he blithely watches what is happening in fron of him. A dangerous place 'The Murk”

Peter and I fished there a few times and we would sit atop the cliff and wait and check out the idiosyncrasies of the sets of waves as they pounded the rocks below. I learned this patience myself from surfing. We often revised our decision to fish the place after watching that 'rogue bastard' sweep behind the fishing spot.

In the late seventies my brother and I had a small business, the actual work of which was carried on outdoors. This allowed us some inclement weather days off and on one of these we found ourselves on the northern beaches of Sydney. There was a hurricane brewing out at sea and Sydney was on the outer edge of the big blow. We decided to watch the sea from the cliffs above 'The Murk'.

We parked our car and sat on the edge of the cliffs as the odd gust of windy rain swept over us. The sea so far below us was a churning mass of swirling, smashing, blasting and most noticeably huge waves.

They talk about the angry sea well this day it was absolutely apoplectic. Naturally being the foolish people we were we decided to have a closer look, why, well who knows but we did.

The first part of the descent of the cliff is a scrambling few metres down, the next short section is a five metre drop down on a frayed old rope. This terminates on a rock ledge and if you were to ask me how high this was above the churning sea below I would hazard a guess at twenty five or more metres.

So there we sat both pretending we were not cold although my shivering might have given me away, we were in fact cloaked in our own machismo as we watched the pounding waves from miles out at sea as they crashed over each other in a frenzied attack on the cliffs of Sydney. Every now and then as is normal there would be one super monster who would shoulder the rest aside it its anger to get at the land and crash with unbelievable force against the shore.

The rain became insignificant as we were being soaked from the sea spray. We sat in awed silence as one behemoth towered above the rest and actually seemed to be on our eye level, the silence was broken between my brother and I as we realised the wave was actually coming at us at the level we were above from the seas below.

The word tsunami might have been called for but of course it would not be correct. The wave crashed against the cliffs just below our feet and we rushed into the shelter a fallen boulder learning against the rock face, I wedged myself in by the shoulders and my brother selflessly pushed me further into the crevice and wedged his own shoulders in and we hung on for our lives.

When the water had finished rushing over us and we emerged out of the green doom and could breathe again, we both started to laugh. I am sure there was a sort of hysterical relief in our guffaws. Until we looked seaward again to be stunned with an even bigger monster bearing down on us with what we perceived to be pure malice. This time we were looking up. Again we wedged ourselves into the crevice and held on and prayed to be given the chance to see our families again. We were given that chance as the monstrous wave crashed over us and I swear my hand prints are there as I grasped the rocky sanctuary with all the strength I have.

What can I say only foolish, foolish boy, and foolish foolish men, as for the sea, I love it.

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of lunch here at Currumbin Surf Club, as you can see from today’s pictures the Surf club itself is built directly on a large geographical feature of the area, Elephant rock.

Why anybody would choose to spoil such an interesting feature let alone for a council to allow it, is beyond me but there it is. I have visited this venue before, Father’s Day 2007 and so I have inside information that the lunch will be excellent regardless of the positioning of the club.

The rock, is of course the more interesting, I think rocks are sort of interesting because they are what they are, where they are and shaped the way they, are all of which would seem at random, at it doesn’t matter what you or I think, they have plonked themselves down and that’s that as far as the rock is concerned.
We humans need to put in a great deal of work with hammers or explosives to make a difference in their rock world.

This big rock looks to be igneous in nature and the result of an angry volcanic eruption (can there be any other kind?) and has been vomited from the earth to solidify in the hilly area inland of the seafront, which of course at the time eons ago may well have been somewhere , anywhere about here.

The monolithic boulder possibly rolled from its perch above the beachfront where it came to rest on a platform of brother rocks who no doubt welcome it in a civil happy and certainly not with a stoney silence. Rocks, stones, boulders etc speak in a frequency not heard by mere human ears.

Elephant rock and the table it appears to rest on seem very new geologically speaking because there appears little erosion from the wind, salt air and wave action and if we look north we can see another rocky sibling jutting proudly from the beach in an area known as Currumbin Alley which I gather is a name generated from the surfing culture which as you can imagine is very prevalent here.

(There is a short video at the end of this article.)

Within a few miles of this very spot the local district claims ownership of several World Surfing Champions including current hero and world ranked No. 1 Mick Fanning and current Women’s champion Stephanie Gilmore who was born around the corner or at least a short distance from here up the Tweed River at Murwillumbah I will be doing an entry on Murwillumbah in the next few days.

Currumbin Alley marks the southern edge of the entrance to Currumbin Creek which is a tidal waterway fed by the Salty Ocean during high tides and mountain fed fresh water during low tide. This leads to brackish water quite close to the outflow adjacent to Currumbin Alley and is apparently an area in which it is possible to encounter the notorious Bull Shark.

This estuary dweller seems to prefer brackish tidal depths and is very much adapted to seeking its food in murky water. As we proceed up the creek the clarity declines as the leaf and earth stained fresher water becomes predominant. The use of fresh water seems a little misleading here but of course I mean non salty water. When it first trickled down from the wonderful Border Ranges far above in the catchment area, the water was as almost as fresh as water can be.

Currumbin Creek East

As we get to know each other better(reader and scribe) you will find I do not enjoy swimming, lolling, floating, soaking, wading, splashing or generally getting wet in water that is not clear. Like most things there is a reason but that story is for another day.

So lets about face and retreat along the murky parts of Currumbin Creek and be dazzled by one of the loveliest stretches of yellow glowing sand in a nation of lovely yellow glowing beaches.

Even the erstwhile British tourist does not feel the need to wear a handkerchief with knots tied in the corners on a balding or even hirsute pate.

Why on earth our British cousins allowed Aussies like me (I was born in the UK incidentally) to have this image of English manhood I will never know.

Imagine a latin lover boy with the Andalusian accent of the Spanish gigolo emerging from the sea, brown muscles glistening from the crystal clear waters of Currumbin Beach with his daggy trousers rolled above the knees and wearing a four corner tied handkerchief plastered to his head.

Oh Dear! could this be the beginning of an international incident. As if we Aussies are never portrayed in foreign press as anything but fine upstanding incredibly great looking young people. “Where the Bloody hell are ya’s”. Ms Lara Bingle or her former paramouror cricketer Michael Clarke, are fine examples of what all Australian look like. Well that’s the portrayal we wish to believe, not that Stephanie Gilmore or Mick Fanning are hard on the eyes to their respective opposite sexes or of course in some cases, same sexes.

To the north of Currumbin Beach is the commercially named Palm Beach which although it has much of the aforementioned glowing yellow sand and sunshine liberally applied to tanned and less tanned new arrivals alike, there are few Palm trees to be seen other than in the occasional suburban backyard.

Nevertheless the atmosphere is generally holiday plus, for the family lucky enough to visit this part of the world. Here there’s a little extra bonus for folk like me…. the water is a perfect temperature and generally beautifully refreshing, no Irukanji stingers here, no stone fish, sometimes ablue bottle will appear and best of all……..few bull sharks nosing around, the waters too clear.

So now I must toss up to see where I am off to tomorrow after my ”Feast with Friends” in a few minutes

Ahh!!!!……… the sublime pleasures of the older man traveling about our wonderful country.

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Before tripping the light fantastic whether it be a blog or a trip, it is necessary to take a first step, welcome to the first step.

The postings on this home page of the short stories-funny stories blog will concentrate mostly on whatever it is that happens to the writer during an around Australia trip. The writer mentioned is me folks, Roger Crates, an older man and proud of it. If you wish to use the older man’s voice as you read, go ahead. Now I don’t mean the trade mark voice of say Walter Brennan or even George Burns but maybe a aged Sean Connery without the Edinburgh accent.

Now that I have your imagination working and it is in your head that I might be, even the remotest bit like the swashbuckling Connery, please understand that I have no buckle to swash, and an appalling Australian accent.

The accent is appalling only in that I fall into little silences in which the listener may think I have lost my thread, but the truth is I am looking for a substitute for the adverb bloody and the word bugger, which is both a proper noun and adverb in my form of usage.

In fact as a little boy I had one of those little English boy’s accent and sometimes even now I still say Poohl for a place to swim and schoohl for a place to while away a little boys time with daydreams.

I have had interesting life and part of this ongoing process is to take this rather rickety old body around Australia. This may seem mundane to the casual reader but if my life so far is any indication, there are adventures aplenty to be had during the next year or two.

For example I will be riding a motor scooter across the wide brown land and behind me will be a particularly cute little trailer, which will contain all those things I believe will sustain me during my ride.

Amongst these will be my cameras, I am not a photographer, my tent, I am not a camper, my little stove and foodstuffs, I can cook a bit, my chair, I am very good at sitting, my bed, I am even better at sleeping, my computer which I use as a fancy dancy typewriter, I am an author. I will also be taking my sense of humour, which is essential to me as I laugh a lot, the artificial bits and pieces that hold me together like knees and hips, and a spare can of petrol.

I hope I will be taking along a folding canoe of my own design, but I will have to see how my design turns out before I can confirm my nautical pretensions to you.

While on my odyssey I will be attempting, hold on, hold on, make that I will be writing this blog and a series of short stories on Australian rural towns.

I write short stories, most of which have an Australian flavour. I hasten to add the Australian flavour is a mixture of barbequed sausages and suntan oil with a hint of red outback bulldust. The bulldust does give the sausage a touch of grit just as the occasional hardship in rural towns gives a little grit to those that love their special country places.

The sale of the short stories and other pieces will basically finance the trip, so if you look particularly hard you will find, on the top of this page, a link to my stories which will enable you to read a sample of a Short Story or my Columns or even my Autobiography and if you wish, you can buy it right here from this site.

I am also hoping to raise some funds for a charity called Pab’s place which we hope will be established in the Hinterland of the Gold Coast, near Mt. Tamborine. The idea is to create a not for profit, free if we can, retreat for suffers of cancer and other life threatening illness’. More on that later as it is only in its very early stages at the moment.

I am also supporting The Royal flying Doctor service and I am setting up a separate web page with a registered Fund Raising company called Everyday Heroes and donations will go directly to them to be dispersed to The Royal flying Doctors directly and not through this site. Other things are planned but that is as regular readers will note, another story.

The Blog will also feature the occasional photo and video bit of nonsense which, sadly for you, will feature me telling you just where I am in Australia, hence the ‘Where’s Roger’ incorporated in this Blog page. I will also post some of the photos I take of the places I go. I will mostly only post those ones which do not feature

(1) My finger in the way of the lens or

(2) My feet or

(c) Completely blurry stuff

Now that I have taken a first step here and you are here this is what I did yesterday at Currumbin

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When the early settlers came north overland they began to find something truly wonderful, the Australian coastal hinterlands. I can imagine that the usual method was to follow the path of easiest resistance or as was the case in the very early exploration of the NSW interior and the intrepid ones ‘followed the ridges’.

From the area now known as the North Coast which refers to the north coast of NSW rather than the lesser known area south of the Brisbane River. Following along the coastal path was of course not only the one of absolute least resistance, water easier to traverse, providing you have a boat of course, but it was also safer and with a good chance of finding succor from the sea along the ever more popular coast of the NSW.

Capt. Cook spotted Mt Warning in 1770 and named it Mt warning as a reference to the off shore reefs from a given bearing out at sea. I will be visiting the Cloud Catcher as it was known to the Indigenous people of the area, in a further episode of Where’s roger, but for now the adventure continues over the Border Ranges.

However if one was to wander inland from where Capt Cook stood on his wooden deck staring inland so many years ago, you would be in sight of more than just Mt. Warning, you would be in the august presence of the Border Ranges.

The best and easiest way to traverse this wonderful scenic route is from Currumbin to Murwillumbah. From Queensland to NSW, Murwillumbah will be tomorrows subject when I arrive there late this evening.

Along the Currumbin Creek road which winds following the path of this water course which you may recall I mentioned in the Currumbin Elephant Rock episode of ‘ Where’s Roger’. In that episode I revealed my dislike for murky water and what may be below. I still owe you a story of the why and wherefore of that irrational fear, another day though. Back to the mini trip along Currumbin Creek road to Tomewin, Currumbin Creek Road, one may imagine that road naming was not a high priority of the trailblazers of the day but that’s the name of the byway.

The road winds up from the valley floor (surprisingly named Currumbin Valley) in Queensland and the traveler is met with a series of 1 in 10 to 1 in 14 steep pitches along the way both up and eventually down the road to the parallel Tweed Valley in NSW .

The short trip is jam packed with wonderful Scenic viewpoints. There are a few garden stalls along the way offering bananas, avocados and a variety of fresh fruits and veggies. At some points looking to the right, you are able to see the Currumbin Valley with its distinctive treeline and meandering Creek if we look right in a northerly direction. A little further along the ridges we can see the far greater vista of the Tweed Valley with its flat plains and the much more grandiose Tweed river nestled in its heart.

The valley is a patchwork of sugarcane squares and small crops of varying hues. I often wonder about the efficiency of growing a relatively low return and low technology crop in such abundantly fertile alluvial soil. I don’t suppose the ancient Egyptians grew only one crop in those same style abundantly fertile alluvial soils along the Nile.

Pushing thoughts of Cleopatra from my mind and as an aside, I have always loved this part of the world, well lets face it who wouldn’t. I was once was thwarted from realising a dream of living here as a young man, lots of those dreams of course have been and gone, but this one did have a twist.

Although I never did live beside or near the wonderful and placid Tweed River as I had wished. Many years later my son and his family got the opportunity to buy a property just about three kilometers from the tranquil shores in the lovely valley paradise of Nunderi. I had never spoken about my own thwarted ambitions to live here and now my grandchildren enjoy the region. There was no particular reason for them choosing this very spot out of all the rest of Australia, but then it’s a funny old world isn’t it?

I have written at length about these type of happenings in one’s life in My autobiography, ‘Love, Life and Wet Fish Dancing’. For those interested Wet Fish Dancing is a large part of my life and the book is available from this site.

But I digress, the road twists and turns up and down and along ridges seemingly delicate balanced between ragged peaks. Here the road transforms its title from Tomewin Currumbin Road to Tomewin Road so I guess we are in Tomewin itself. Here is something I find both rather amusing and slightly symbolistic to my cynical old mind.

As we approach the Queensland/New South Wales border from the Queensland side, the last thing one sees is a bin placed on the Northern side of an old cattle grid marking the boundaries. I would suggest it has been along time since any cow or anything else has been mustered up here. The bin on the side of the road is a collection bin asking for help for the Volunteer Fire Fighters of the district. Sort of a last gasp attempt to get some money for that most erstwhile organisation. Five Metres away on the NSW side, are an array of speed cameras along with the usual warnings that you will be fined and possibly hung, drawn and quartered if you don’t have any money.

The ludicrous thing is that to cross a grid on a bend on a narrow road on the top of the world, to be confronted with very expensive speed cameras, if they are real that is and not a government bluff, to my mind is the height of folly, I am sure it is meant to convey a message only the message is probably not the desired one.

From here on it is mostly down hill in the physical sense that is, down into the Tweed Valley where Banana plantations flourish on sunny slopes. The traveler will follow the road across a couple of delightful creeks and past the hamlet of Dungay and a picturesque (almost a pun there) Art Gallery housed in an old Red Rooster train carriage, great place to stop for a coffee too.

The road branches west to head toward Crystal creek and the many wonderful spots I will be visiting in the coming days but for now I will continue on up the road to Murwillumbah and then to say Hi to the family and the grandkids.

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A CHRISTMAS STORY

Seeing that it is that time of the year, I think a Christmas story is in order. It just so happens I coundn’t sleep so well. I woke up early this morning so I had better haul bones, get out of bed and hit the computer to tell you the tale, is it a tale? Well not really, but it has kept me from the sleep of the just.

In all the countries of the new world as they called Australia, the Americas and parts of Africa, there have been a special breed of characters. This special breed, were not, as the original inhabitants might have told you, not particularly special and the lands they conquered were not particularly new either. They had lived there for eons.

If we delve back even further in time say a few million years give or take an eon or two we might find even these ‘original inhabitants’ were not all that original at all. They had simply out thought and subsequently killed off the neanderthals or whatever breed of pre human existed in the region, at that time.

Evolution can be cruel and certainly holds no sentimentality for the ‘original inhabitants’. The same evolutionary traits that were bringing about the original, original inhabitants demise was creating the modern man. He had less body hair but kept some hair, as a sort of token to his wildness on his chin. Modern man also developed that symbol of his modernity, a pot belly.

What on earth has this to do with Christmas you might, quite reasonably ask, not much, I might answer, but it does bring us to an enduring image, most of us that live in both the new and old worlds know exactly what Santa looks like and the reason for this is that he has a full beard and a pot belly. Actually he is rather fat but he fools us into not noticing by wearing outrageous red clothes trimed in white, and to be perfectly frank with you, a ridiculous red extended beannie style hat with a whit pom pom and of course we can’t see how fat his jowls are because of that beard.

A similarly enduring image we have of our pioneering forefathers in North America, but more particularly in South Africa and especially in Australia is the same full beard. Look at any picture of early Australian settlers, not just Bushrangers like Ned Kelly or the heroes of the Eureka Stockade but pretty much everyplace in early Australia was a haven for the unshaven.

One never saw a roman with a full compliment of facial hair dangling and swaying below the chin and catching crumbs and droplets. That is not to say Santa claus was Australian or a denizen of the South African transvaal for that, he was of course European.

He was simply too busy feeding reindeer and banging up toys and keeping elves in line to shave. Not to mention Mrs. Claus who hated his beard but he kept it as a symbol of his independence. She wasn’t that keen on his pot belly but cound’t really mention it as she was a bit of a pudding herself.

Santa was not the only one who felt this way about his jowly locks. Bushmen in the new world felt this way as well, no roman shaved chin for them.

It so happens I knew a man to whom most of the preceeding applies, that is to say he was Australian, kept some of his wildness, had a pot belly and wore the full bushman’s beard down to the level of the first buttoned up button on his shirt which was the third from the top.

Lets call him Roy, and a very fine man he was. He came from a loving family and Christmas was a pretty big deal in the Clomp family. Roy had started his hirsuteness at high school as he thought it was pretty cool to have what was at the time a fuzzy chin. Why in the great blazing heavens Roy thought this was attractive is only known to teenage boys, but it must have some effect because they are often seen in the company of teenage girls.

As the years passed Roy left school and went to work for the local council and there he stayed for almost a lifetime working dilligently and honestly and all the while his fuzz grew and grew.

Roy also liked other things, one of which was one of those same teenage girls who became his bride, this was after high school of course and the fuzz was now a light thatch with a touch of the van dyke about it.

As a staid and tried and true type of Aussie man Roy went to his local pub after work on most days and developed lifelong friendships with other mates who enjoyed the odd cleansing ale, they laughed a lot, loved a lot and were pretty jolly all round.

They all developed a love for the Australian countryside as they often went bush when they were not actually in the pub. This did have a side effect for them and for Roy in particular as they liked a drink while in the bush and naturally at the pub. The collected result of a ‘few cleansing ales’ was that he developed a pot belly.

So Roy developed into a jolly, pot bellied man with a wonderfully full beard, and of course looked like one Mr. Clause, Roy was still a fairly young man when the local chapter of The Australaian Order Of Old Bastards asked him to stand in for old Tom McGuiness who strangely never touched stout but was very stout himself. Tom had been Father Christmas for years and delighted in handing out gifts to the little tackers at the annual ‘Old Bastards’ bash. Tom was very ill and so weak he “could’t blow the froth off a fosters” when into the breach stepped you guessed it of course, Roy. The only thing he needed to do was dye the face fungus to a sort of silver white and Bob’s yer Uncle….hey presto….. Santa.

Roy who was twenty eight years old at the time enjoyed the role so much he did it for the next forty eight years. Poor Tom McGuiness never blew the top off another Fosters or anything else as he passed away before Easter the following year and Roy just sort of took over.

For forty eight years Roy donned the hot red suit, the red extended beannie style hat, with pom pom of course, practised his ho ho ho’s, though he didn’t really need the practice.

He made the dreams and some of the wishes of generations of kids come true and even better, he made them feel the magic of Christmas. He was real, he was Santa. Oh he didn’t actually live at the North Pole, he didn’t even know one elf, and reindeer were something for picture postcard or Laplanders in Norhtern Europe. But he did have a Mrs. Clause…. err Mrs clomp and she was a shade portly some might say ‘a bit of a pudding’ herself.

Roy Clomp and his bride were loved and even revered by generations of children and their parents whether it was holding court in the local pub during the year or ho ho ho’ing up a storm in the ten days before Christmas in halls, local parks and on a dreadfully tacky old sleighd pulled along behind the ‘Old Bastards’s’ Presidents beat up old Chev impala.

They didn’t go to church much except for the odd wedding or christening, they preferred to go fishing or off camping in the bush on weekends, they didn’t belong to any service clubs except the ‘old bastards’ They went to the pictures on Tuesdays till pay TV came along . Their children grew up, grew away.

Roy even died in August 2009, just enough time to find another Santa.

Ah!…. the man was dedicated.

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