acheivement! first part for your reading pleasure...
ok - the much anticipated first part of the houseboat trip*
well while im at work waiting for things to convert to other formats (see i do have the most interesting job in the world*cough* ) i thought i would start writing about our week away,but as i sat and thought about whatwe did i realised we did a lot of nothing much at all...
so i will try andfill in the boring bits with unwitty and unamusing(because im no good at funny) anecdotes.
-----------------------------
People who went were: Me, Dylan, Ames, Tim and Nick (Wiggles)
(and im not a teetotaler ames :P)
------------------------------
i guess you can say the trip started on tuesday because that was the day tim told me (having been told himself THAT DAY) that jess, one of his work friends had to pull out of coming. fair enough you say until you realise that she was one of the drivers to get us down there and she was 21(the importance of which will soon be glaringly apparent). and so i said to tim 'now how are we going to get our shit down there?' to which ever-ready-tim replied 'my mum will drive us'. Problem One apparently solved...
Wednesday ihad a day off work and took the girlies nextdoor (12 and 10) bowling as our school holidays activity. i felt like shit all day, definately the beginnings of a horrible cold, and when we got home about 3:30 i crawled into bed where i remained until dinner time. after picking at my dinner amy and nick arrived to give me a lift to the supermarket (at 7:30 - coz thats when thespecials are on). a trolley full of home brand stuff later we crossed the road to the bottle shop. half an hour later our alcohol tally for the trip included:
1 carton of beer
1 bottle of white rum
1 bottle of vodka
4 cans of guinness
and 1 bottle of strawberry shampagne for ames and i
this was on top of the already existing:
2 bottles of champagne - one cheap, one nice
and 1 bottle of baileys (half full)
and during the trip we bought the following:
another carton of beer(bottles not cans this time - you get 4 LESS!)
a new bottle of baileys
and 1 bottle of whiskey
so... wednesday night i crawled into bed after the shopping. i bought cold and flu tablets which helped me survive... tim said he'd do th perishables and fruit and veg on thursday.
thursday i called up work sick and spent the day in bed. and by thatnight i was feeling a bit better. during dinner i get a call from tim to tell me that his mum can't drive us after all. so he called nick and told him to put on the roof racks. Problem Two apparently averted. Dylan arrived with his stuff and i packed mine. He also gave me a gorgeous ring for our anniversary. so prettyful! bed was pretty early and we set the alarm for 8.30.
Friday finally got here - the culmination of Tim's months of arduous preparation. Looking at the heap of dylan and i's stuff in the front room i was wondering how much everyone else had and sceptical about fitting it all in wiggles little yellow car. my uncle says scepticism poisons your soul (ok so my uncle is strange) but it was well founded when ames and wiggles rocked up and the boot was already full of their stuff. thankfully tim arrived at the same time and announced that his mum COULD drive after all. Problem Two completely resolved. Cars packed and we were off. Dylan and Ames in Wiggles's car and Tim and i in his mum's car - me sharing hte back seat with his brother. Uneventful drive down to Tweed Heads.
NB. Yahtzee does NOT work in the back of a car.
Nick and Co. found the place easy as. We drove past it and somehow ended up on the freeway again! Argh! First exit, several roundabouts and we were back on the main st. With the others guiding us we found the place and the owners and... our boat...
'Small' sprang to mind when we first laid eyes on 'Springtime' - what was to be our home for the next week. Especially next to the uber-monster-$1000 a week-spa on top-boat next to it. We met Peter and Michelle(the owners) put our stuff on board, and while the 'girls' were hustled off to buy ice and bait coz we ' dont need to know how to drive the boat' the boys were taken through the mechanics and stuff. arriving back ames and i were once again pushed aside when we expressed intrest in what was happening and were warned that 'girl' things like hairspray and deoderants would set the gas alarm off so we 'should go spraying them around'. then it was Peter's turn to take usout in the boat and set us on our way - teaching us to steer and all. ames, with her experience at driving her families boat was overlooked and Peter addressed himself to Tim who had volunteered a knowledge of how to drive a dingy.
unbeknownst to ames and i (who had been buying ice at the time), Problem Three had arisen. Paying bond and signing contracts had gone well until Michelle asked who the 21 yr old was on board. Tim hadnt realised that to rent a boat in nsw you needed a 21 yr old. Tim volunteered 19 yr old Nick and Michelle asked his birthday. Thinking onhis feet - because your bday isnt something youforget is it? - nick said 1980 which actually made him 23. So with this act of forgery hanging over nick we set off.
On top of my cold i felt HORRIBLY seasick for the first day. And spent pretty much the first 5 hours sitting up on the deck on top.
By dinner time - although i wasnt hungry - i didnt feel like i was going to throw up either.
We made it about 45 minutes up the Tweed River on Friday. We anchored the boat - anchor followed by its 10 metres of chain (the length of our boat) and then another 8-10 metres of rope - and settled in. We'd stopped there (even though there was a highway on the far side of the river) because across the highway was a grogshop and corner store. We bought Coke and other assorted 'necessities'. First night we ate pasta and pasta sauce. Ames had brought drinking chocolate from her cupboard, so as we settled down to a quiet evening of cards i cooked hot chocolates for people - with or without baileys added. bed was early beacuse it was dark and there wasnt a hell of a lot to do on the boat at night.
Sleeping arrangements on the boat: You could sleep 8 on the boat - but it would be very cramped to live on it during hte day. We were five. Orignally dylan and i were going to sleep in the double bed below the front of the boat (the steering wheel area was directly above) but because i felt queasy down there especially, ames and nick took that bed.
Dylan and i got the double bed that folded out from the seat near the wheel (the seat pulled out making a hollow box and the backrest became the rest of the mattress.
the two bunk beds at the back of the boat we put or suitcases and miscelaneous crap on.
tim's bed was the table winched down level with the seats that surrounded it on three sides, with a cushion for on top.
pretty comfy all round. however ames and nick found it immensly irritating for the whole trip to hear a kind of splishy splashy drippy noise as the waves hit the side of the boat just above their headlevel. it wasnt so bad up above the water level where tim dylan and i were but the floats on the side(for when you dock so the boat doesnt hit the jetty), miscelaneous bits of driftwood and the dingy on the back banged into the boat sometimes too.
Saturday I woke up early, feeling a bit better - not as nauseous and not as coldy, i sat on the front of the boat in my uberly-warm sleeping bag watched the sun finish rising and read my book. lovely.i also discovered that we hadn't tied the anchor rope around the poles securly enough and during hte night we had let out our full length of rope (40-50ms)which couldhave been an issue (another boat or the shore) but wasnt. eventually everyone got up (once one or two people got up you couldnt really sleep - just coz it was such a small space). porridge for breakfast and coffee. we set off by about 9 up the river an hour or so and found a delightful place just past 'Dodd's Island'. We put on some music and decided to stay there the day and night. tim ames and nick buzzed off in the dingy to explore a canal just near our boat. they came back with splinters and dead wood in their hair coz they were touching the underside of a little bridge. shortly after Dylan, Wiggles nad i buzzed off in the other direction (the the canal) to look at some birds sitting on a dead tree in the water... dead tree... we should have realised it was evidently shallow, but we beached the boat on a sandbank, scared off the birds and had an awesome time.
It was also on Saturday that we met 'Ducky'. This precocious bird soon became fast friends and all it took was half a loaf of bread. who said bribery couldn't buy friendship? so he paddled and quacked his way round the boat all day.
The day past as many of the rest to follow would too - doing not a lot and loving it. The weekend was busy on the water with fisherman, lots of houseboats(many were hired for three nights over the weekend) and posh-o boats creating big wakes that would rock the boat. Everyone was in bed by 9ish.
Sunday Ames and dylan were up first and were just wondering where Ducky had got to when he made an apparently dramatic and well-timed entrance quacking loudly. Breakfast was eaten and shared with feathered friend. but apparently avian friendship is a fickle thing for when another small houseboat trundled (for that is how hosueboats move) past he turned himself round and frantically followed that. Curses were heard and then ames and others jumped in the dingy- equipped with bread to lure it back to its true friends. apparently it was successful however when they arrived back withOUT the duck one had to ask where it was... 'oh the dingy went to fast and left it behind'. hrm...true friendship. lol
I felt quite a bit better by sunday, jsut runny nose pretty much.
so we trundled off and drove for about an hour and a half up to Tumblegum. Now the name Tumblegum seems to roll off your tounge doesn't it? Conjuring up images of a peaceful idyllic river town. However when we arrived (anchored on the other side of the river and jumped into the dingy) we discovered a town that seemed to exist solely for the tourists (as old and geriatric as most of them were). The Tweed River Cruise Boat would call in there for lunch at 'the first pub on the tweed' est 1825 or something like that. youcould get a salad for about $24... get the picture? there was a cliched art gallery cum coffee shop, a cafe that served foccacias and club sandwiches and a dingy corner store/supermarket that reminded me of the mother hubbard nursery rhyme - 'the cupboard was bare'. but we bought milk and the paper and chocolate! yum. back on the boat we trundled up a river off the tweed river, past three houseboats till we came to a beautiful spot where the river opened up into a shallow oval shape. mangroves and trees everywhere - coincidentally concealing (we later learned) the highway running right along it... but even that couldnt spoil what ames cristened 'Wiggles Cove'.
And so we settled into a afternoon of buzzing around in the dingy, reading good books, fishing unsuccessfully, and card games. ames nick and dylan zoomed off armed with the only sharp knife on board (and sharp may be an exageration) and cut some sugar cane off a field nearby. it tasted really sweet but had lots of fibrous bits in it that got stuckin my braces and annoyed the hell out of me for the rest of the day. dylan and ames decided to jump into the river. dylan wouldnt let ames feel the temperature of the water before she jumped. when they jumped in amy came up and was gasping for air coz it was so cold it had knocked the air out of her. dylan - as always - didnt seem to feel the cold and swum around while ames got out as quick as she could, wrapped up in a towel and chattered 'i cant feel my feet'. afteer dylan had jumped off a few more times he somehow conviced ames that it wasnt THAT bad. and she jumped in again, quickly to realise that it WAS THAT bad! sunset was gorgeous. dinner was pasta and pasta sauce/water. Tim amesand i played Up and Down the River (kinda like 500 but easier). Ames and i failed miserably and coouldnt get out of the negatives while Tim owned us all. Bed by 9ish.
*the author takes no responsibility for any lethargy, tiredness or unconciousness that may result from reading this entry. by clicking on the above link the viewer absolves themselves of all claim to boredom or tedium they may experience.
well while im at work waiting for things to convert to other formats (see i do have the most interesting job in the world*cough* ) i thought i would start writing about our week away,but as i sat and thought about whatwe did i realised we did a lot of nothing much at all...
so i will try andfill in the boring bits with unwitty and unamusing(because im no good at funny) anecdotes.
-----------------------------
People who went were: Me, Dylan, Ames, Tim and Nick (Wiggles)
(and im not a teetotaler ames :P)
------------------------------
i guess you can say the trip started on tuesday because that was the day tim told me (having been told himself THAT DAY) that jess, one of his work friends had to pull out of coming. fair enough you say until you realise that she was one of the drivers to get us down there and she was 21(the importance of which will soon be glaringly apparent). and so i said to tim 'now how are we going to get our shit down there?' to which ever-ready-tim replied 'my mum will drive us'. Problem One apparently solved...
Wednesday ihad a day off work and took the girlies nextdoor (12 and 10) bowling as our school holidays activity. i felt like shit all day, definately the beginnings of a horrible cold, and when we got home about 3:30 i crawled into bed where i remained until dinner time. after picking at my dinner amy and nick arrived to give me a lift to the supermarket (at 7:30 - coz thats when thespecials are on). a trolley full of home brand stuff later we crossed the road to the bottle shop. half an hour later our alcohol tally for the trip included:
1 carton of beer
1 bottle of white rum
1 bottle of vodka
4 cans of guinness
and 1 bottle of strawberry shampagne for ames and i
this was on top of the already existing:
2 bottles of champagne - one cheap, one nice
and 1 bottle of baileys (half full)
and during the trip we bought the following:
another carton of beer(bottles not cans this time - you get 4 LESS!)
a new bottle of baileys
and 1 bottle of whiskey
so... wednesday night i crawled into bed after the shopping. i bought cold and flu tablets which helped me survive... tim said he'd do th perishables and fruit and veg on thursday.
thursday i called up work sick and spent the day in bed. and by thatnight i was feeling a bit better. during dinner i get a call from tim to tell me that his mum can't drive us after all. so he called nick and told him to put on the roof racks. Problem Two apparently averted. Dylan arrived with his stuff and i packed mine. He also gave me a gorgeous ring for our anniversary. so prettyful! bed was pretty early and we set the alarm for 8.30.
Friday finally got here - the culmination of Tim's months of arduous preparation. Looking at the heap of dylan and i's stuff in the front room i was wondering how much everyone else had and sceptical about fitting it all in wiggles little yellow car. my uncle says scepticism poisons your soul (ok so my uncle is strange) but it was well founded when ames and wiggles rocked up and the boot was already full of their stuff. thankfully tim arrived at the same time and announced that his mum COULD drive after all. Problem Two completely resolved. Cars packed and we were off. Dylan and Ames in Wiggles's car and Tim and i in his mum's car - me sharing hte back seat with his brother. Uneventful drive down to Tweed Heads.
NB. Yahtzee does NOT work in the back of a car.
Nick and Co. found the place easy as. We drove past it and somehow ended up on the freeway again! Argh! First exit, several roundabouts and we were back on the main st. With the others guiding us we found the place and the owners and... our boat...
'Small' sprang to mind when we first laid eyes on 'Springtime' - what was to be our home for the next week. Especially next to the uber-monster-$1000 a week-spa on top-boat next to it. We met Peter and Michelle(the owners) put our stuff on board, and while the 'girls' were hustled off to buy ice and bait coz we ' dont need to know how to drive the boat' the boys were taken through the mechanics and stuff. arriving back ames and i were once again pushed aside when we expressed intrest in what was happening and were warned that 'girl' things like hairspray and deoderants would set the gas alarm off so we 'should go spraying them around'. then it was Peter's turn to take usout in the boat and set us on our way - teaching us to steer and all. ames, with her experience at driving her families boat was overlooked and Peter addressed himself to Tim who had volunteered a knowledge of how to drive a dingy.
unbeknownst to ames and i (who had been buying ice at the time), Problem Three had arisen. Paying bond and signing contracts had gone well until Michelle asked who the 21 yr old was on board. Tim hadnt realised that to rent a boat in nsw you needed a 21 yr old. Tim volunteered 19 yr old Nick and Michelle asked his birthday. Thinking onhis feet - because your bday isnt something youforget is it? - nick said 1980 which actually made him 23. So with this act of forgery hanging over nick we set off.
On top of my cold i felt HORRIBLY seasick for the first day. And spent pretty much the first 5 hours sitting up on the deck on top.
By dinner time - although i wasnt hungry - i didnt feel like i was going to throw up either.
We made it about 45 minutes up the Tweed River on Friday. We anchored the boat - anchor followed by its 10 metres of chain (the length of our boat) and then another 8-10 metres of rope - and settled in. We'd stopped there (even though there was a highway on the far side of the river) because across the highway was a grogshop and corner store. We bought Coke and other assorted 'necessities'. First night we ate pasta and pasta sauce. Ames had brought drinking chocolate from her cupboard, so as we settled down to a quiet evening of cards i cooked hot chocolates for people - with or without baileys added. bed was early beacuse it was dark and there wasnt a hell of a lot to do on the boat at night.
Sleeping arrangements on the boat: You could sleep 8 on the boat - but it would be very cramped to live on it during hte day. We were five. Orignally dylan and i were going to sleep in the double bed below the front of the boat (the steering wheel area was directly above) but because i felt queasy down there especially, ames and nick took that bed.
Dylan and i got the double bed that folded out from the seat near the wheel (the seat pulled out making a hollow box and the backrest became the rest of the mattress.
the two bunk beds at the back of the boat we put or suitcases and miscelaneous crap on.
tim's bed was the table winched down level with the seats that surrounded it on three sides, with a cushion for on top.
pretty comfy all round. however ames and nick found it immensly irritating for the whole trip to hear a kind of splishy splashy drippy noise as the waves hit the side of the boat just above their headlevel. it wasnt so bad up above the water level where tim dylan and i were but the floats on the side(for when you dock so the boat doesnt hit the jetty), miscelaneous bits of driftwood and the dingy on the back banged into the boat sometimes too.
Saturday I woke up early, feeling a bit better - not as nauseous and not as coldy, i sat on the front of the boat in my uberly-warm sleeping bag watched the sun finish rising and read my book. lovely.i also discovered that we hadn't tied the anchor rope around the poles securly enough and during hte night we had let out our full length of rope (40-50ms)which couldhave been an issue (another boat or the shore) but wasnt. eventually everyone got up (once one or two people got up you couldnt really sleep - just coz it was such a small space). porridge for breakfast and coffee. we set off by about 9 up the river an hour or so and found a delightful place just past 'Dodd's Island'. We put on some music and decided to stay there the day and night. tim ames and nick buzzed off in the dingy to explore a canal just near our boat. they came back with splinters and dead wood in their hair coz they were touching the underside of a little bridge. shortly after Dylan, Wiggles nad i buzzed off in the other direction (the the canal) to look at some birds sitting on a dead tree in the water... dead tree... we should have realised it was evidently shallow, but we beached the boat on a sandbank, scared off the birds and had an awesome time.
It was also on Saturday that we met 'Ducky'. This precocious bird soon became fast friends and all it took was half a loaf of bread. who said bribery couldn't buy friendship? so he paddled and quacked his way round the boat all day.
The day past as many of the rest to follow would too - doing not a lot and loving it. The weekend was busy on the water with fisherman, lots of houseboats(many were hired for three nights over the weekend) and posh-o boats creating big wakes that would rock the boat. Everyone was in bed by 9ish.
Sunday Ames and dylan were up first and were just wondering where Ducky had got to when he made an apparently dramatic and well-timed entrance quacking loudly. Breakfast was eaten and shared with feathered friend. but apparently avian friendship is a fickle thing for when another small houseboat trundled (for that is how hosueboats move) past he turned himself round and frantically followed that. Curses were heard and then ames and others jumped in the dingy- equipped with bread to lure it back to its true friends. apparently it was successful however when they arrived back withOUT the duck one had to ask where it was... 'oh the dingy went to fast and left it behind'. hrm...true friendship. lol
I felt quite a bit better by sunday, jsut runny nose pretty much.
so we trundled off and drove for about an hour and a half up to Tumblegum. Now the name Tumblegum seems to roll off your tounge doesn't it? Conjuring up images of a peaceful idyllic river town. However when we arrived (anchored on the other side of the river and jumped into the dingy) we discovered a town that seemed to exist solely for the tourists (as old and geriatric as most of them were). The Tweed River Cruise Boat would call in there for lunch at 'the first pub on the tweed' est 1825 or something like that. youcould get a salad for about $24... get the picture? there was a cliched art gallery cum coffee shop, a cafe that served foccacias and club sandwiches and a dingy corner store/supermarket that reminded me of the mother hubbard nursery rhyme - 'the cupboard was bare'. but we bought milk and the paper and chocolate! yum. back on the boat we trundled up a river off the tweed river, past three houseboats till we came to a beautiful spot where the river opened up into a shallow oval shape. mangroves and trees everywhere - coincidentally concealing (we later learned) the highway running right along it... but even that couldnt spoil what ames cristened 'Wiggles Cove'.
And so we settled into a afternoon of buzzing around in the dingy, reading good books, fishing unsuccessfully, and card games. ames nick and dylan zoomed off armed with the only sharp knife on board (and sharp may be an exageration) and cut some sugar cane off a field nearby. it tasted really sweet but had lots of fibrous bits in it that got stuckin my braces and annoyed the hell out of me for the rest of the day. dylan and ames decided to jump into the river. dylan wouldnt let ames feel the temperature of the water before she jumped. when they jumped in amy came up and was gasping for air coz it was so cold it had knocked the air out of her. dylan - as always - didnt seem to feel the cold and swum around while ames got out as quick as she could, wrapped up in a towel and chattered 'i cant feel my feet'. afteer dylan had jumped off a few more times he somehow conviced ames that it wasnt THAT bad. and she jumped in again, quickly to realise that it WAS THAT bad! sunset was gorgeous. dinner was pasta and pasta sauce/water. Tim amesand i played Up and Down the River (kinda like 500 but easier). Ames and i failed miserably and coouldnt get out of the negatives while Tim owned us all. Bed by 9ish.
*the author takes no responsibility for any lethargy, tiredness or unconciousness that may result from reading this entry. by clicking on the above link the viewer absolves themselves of all claim to boredom or tedium they may experience.