HOME SWEET HOUSEBOAT

HOME SWEET HOUSEBOAT.

The fish, crabs, eels and assorted shellfish I harvested in the Billongil estuary had helped considerably to stretch out my fortnightly pension payments and now it wasn’t safe to swim in the water, let alone digest any of it’s toxic fare.  The mighty Brunswick river lies just to the North of Byron Bay and it seemed like the most logical location to head for if I was to stay on the water and maintain a diet of fresh, and mostly uncontaminated seafood.  I dismantled the raft in a single afternoon and stacked the components on a high bank at the end of a wetland track.  The following day Danny from the Epicentre drove down to the creek with a trailer and we loaded it up to well beyond it’s capacity. Danny dropped me and my deconstructed raft off beside a rickety old jetty that sits on the Mullumbimby arm of the Brunswick river.  A wet season storm was brewing in the east so we unloaded the gear onto a palm sheltered bank and covered the whole thing up with a canvas tarp.  The rain hit shortly after Danny drove off and I spent the night under the tarp trying to avoid a host of infuriating leaks.   As is the way in the sub tropics the next morning was clear and blue like the fast moving body of water that was my new home.  I reconstructed the raft over the next three days, making improvements as I went to the original design. By the time I was up and floating all of my most hard to get at leaks had been patched up. In the more turbulent conditions of a much larger waterway I found my bamboo pole was of little use.  It worked ok to push off from the bank but after that all I could do was go with the upstream flow.  Eventually after negotiating a number of tricky bends I came to a suitable mooring about two miles from any caravan parks or small talking weekend anglers. It was a shallow, palm sheltered inlet which snaked lazily between fully laden oyster racks and white painted channel markers.

From the raft I could travel into Brunswick Heads by pushbike but it was always done with the maximum amount of physical exertion.  The sandy riverside tracks made it impossible to ride all the way and before long a motorised dingy putted into my daydreams, with myself adventure bound at the helm.  No sooner had the idea come to mind before the absolute deal of the century caught my eye.  The boat was sitting in a neat, flowery front garden just near the general store in town.  It belonged to a lovely old retired couple who wanted to clear some room in their back shed.  I displayed keen interest to the elderly gentleman who owned the boat and he showed genuine sympathy as I informed him of my meagre disability allowance.  When I enquired about the possibility of time payment his wife jumped in to say it would be, “Quite alright!”.  Their names were Stella and Arnold Macpherson and they must have thought I was an honourable man because they let me take the boat a deposit with the assurance I would pop in and see them when my next pension cheque came through.  I gave them the last fifty dollars I had to my name as the first payment, but it was well worth the investment knowing I would be motoring along like a true riverman, instead of doing battle with those awful sandy tracks.  The South arm of the river was just across the Pacific highway about sixty feet from where we stood and I found the temptation to hit the water too great to resist. I unhooked the engine from it’s mountings and dragged the tinny to a ready position facing the other side of the highway.  When there was a sufficient break in the traffic I dragged the boat across the gravel shoulder.  It scraped and scratched over the bitumen surface then I had to get it over a concrete divider that stood about a foot high.   I had just made it to the opposite side as a convoy of semi trailers came thundering around the bend.  With the boat perched on a high bank facing the water I did another couple of trips for my bike and the outboard motor, ducking the busy traffic as I went. 

There was a narrow vine fringed track leading down to the estuary upon which the boat slid quite easily.  I loaded the pushbike into the front section of the dingy after the motor was remounted, then gently eased my new runabout into the rising tide. The engine fired up with a second pull of the chord and just a touch of choke.  Before I knew it I was enjoying my first motorised trip up the river and the sensation of freedom that I experienced no words could adequately describe.  The Savage aluminium dingy and Tohatsu five horsepower motor had been well cared for through the years and I ended up getting the whole thing for a little under four hundred dollars.  Those wonderful old folk even threw in an anchor and some oars with the deal, which otherwise would have cost me a hundred bucks.  Fantastic human beings.  Each pension day the boat repayments were at the top of my expenditure list and my newly acquainted senior citizen friends made me cups of tea when I called in to repay their kindness.  They listened with great interest as I told them of encounters I had with the wetland wildlife and they loved to hear my most exciting fishing tales.  Both had been ardent anglers in their day and I was told about the great catches they had made through the years on the same stretch of water.  Often Mr. Macpherson would express how glad he was the boat was being put to good use rather that cluttering up his toolshed.  The truth of the matter was the couple were just too old to haul it around anymore and I felt like I had been granted ownership of their final link with joys of youth.  The bumpy drag the boat underwent to get across the highway had caused a slight leak just below where the engine was mounted, but it was easily fixed with a small dab of tar.  The motor didn’t miss a beat from the word go and it used so little fuel to get around that a two litre can kept me going for a couple of days.  As a constant mode of transport a boat was a far more practical than any car could have been, because not even a four wheel drive would have got close to where the raft was moored. Whenever I needed to pick up more fuel and supplies I simply pulled up at an oyster lease mooring right behind the local shopping centre at Ocean Shores.  The run from my campsite to Mullumbimby took a little over an hour and once I got there I could tie up under a bridge right in the middle of town.  If ever I needed to score some Mexican Dancing Tobacco or spend some time with people it was just a short walk from the river to the ’Dropout Lodge’.  I was living as far away from the party circuit as I could possibly get but Bill and the crew always had news of the next rage that couldn’t be missed.  My script was less than half complete and I rarely got more than a few pages written before another tribal event came up.  On those glorious occasions where I just got to hang out in the raft and download my imagination onto the laptop it was the closest thing to contentment I’ve ever known.  One time during a bout of the mental blocks I was pondering where I should place a song called ‘Rainbow Dream’ among the text and the dialogue in the story.  A sun shower started to fall as I agonised over the problem and a full ark rainbow suddenly appeared above my secluded inlet.  It was like some kind of devine revelation which instantly dissolved the mental block and landed the song in the most appropriate point of context it ever could have found.

Living on the raft was even more compact than camping in the transit because there was only enough room for my outstretched bedroll, with about a foot either side for other stuff.  A full sized houseboat seemed like an appropriate progression in my river dwelling oddessy, so I started keeping an eye out for bits and pieces I could use to make it a reality.  Up the river close to Mullumbimby there were some patches of tall bamboo leaning into the water from the banks.  Large poles had been blown down by coastal storms and those that weren’t washed out to sea were perfectly cured in the salty, brackish flow.  I gathered the best poles I could find and tied them together in a thirty foot long triangular towline.  To get them back to the inlet I had to push against an incoming tide with the outboard motor running at full stick.  I rounded the last bend back to my camp as the sun was setting on Chingogan and my bamboo harvest was tied up among the mangroves ready to be stacked with the first light of dawn. Most of the next day was spent deconstructing the raft so I could use it’s component parts to build a drying rack for the bamboo.   Then for about ten days I slept under a tree slung tarp while I waited for the poles to dry out.  I turned the rows daily to get an even spread of sunlight and by the time they were ready to use the sun hardened skins shone smooth and golden brown.  A hacksaw worked much better than a normal handsaw to cut the desired lengths, which would be used for the pontoons and the cabin frame.  I commenced work on the houseboat from a hastily sketched design and it was a real test of my mathematical skills to calculate the sizes I would need.  The cabin frame had to be reinforced with diagonal cross members which meant that all sorts of weird angled joints had to be cut into the ends of the bamboo.  This was my first ever attempt at any kind of real construction and my fingers were crossed that it would turn out as expected.  Just outside of Brunswick Heads on the way to Byron a new housing development was in progress and as yet only the bitumen streets and cul de sacs had been put in place. Underground stormwater and sewerage pipes were being connected to the properties and there were neatly stacked piles of PVC everywhere.  With images of the Billongil fishkill still fresh in my thoughts I decided it was my environmental duty to confiscate some of the pipes and thus help to restrict the flow of shit into the Brunswick river.  The sky became increasingly overcast as I rolled two of the larger plastic cylinders down to the waters edge.  The ends of the pipes were hastily sealed with sheets of clear plastic and gaffa tape to keep them afloat for the trip, then I commenced to tow them back to my inlet in the driving rain.  By the time I was eventually tied up at the raft one of the pipes had completely submerged and it was catching snags on the bottom.  It took me about an hour to get it free as I cursed the high heavens and groped around underwater in a pelting downpour. 

That night trip up the dark and storm battered Brunswick river was my first real test of dealing with the elements while out on the water.  It taught me a lot about the real value of advance preparation when embarking on any kind of fast water activities.  All of the worst possible kind of unforseen shit seems to happen at the very moment you don't need them to.  As part of my ongoing anger management campaign I have named this most unenjoyable phenominum 'the comedy of errors without the comedy' and it helps me to see the funnier side of the fuckups that can occur.  One of my main priorities in this life is to learn how to control the stress that can rise up and hinder progress when dealing with man made objects.  The storm raged through the night and then subsided with the dawn as the morning sunlight dried the land. I dragged the pipes out of the water and placed them on a reasonably high sandbar where I started the construction of the pontoons.  I chose the spot I did because it looked like the kind of high mangrove lined mudflat that only gets flooded on the king tide.  The moon had just come into a new end of year cycle so I figured I had just enough time to get my flotation completed and into the water.  The big PVC pipes were stuffed full of polystyrene foam from the raft and sealed with epoxy fastened wood caps to form the inner core of the pontoons.   Then by using a system of ropes and overhanging branches I fixed an outer layer of bamboo poles around the PVC with re-cycled seat belts.  The king tide came in as predicted just two days after the pontoons were complete and the rising waters lifted them clear of the boggy mud flat.  I dragged them over a long, weed covered sandbar with the rising tide and they were tied up in the shallows under a giant mangrove tree.  With the pontoons now up and floating I set about making a timber frame which would join them together and serve as the foundation for my bamboo hut.  What timber I didn’t find washed up on the riverbanks I scored from a moderately priced secondhand dealer right near the water in Mullum.  The floor frame was held together by brand new, stainless steel bolts and apart from a bail of twine they were the only new building materials I had to buy.   But for a few minor errors my mathematical calculations for the cabin frame worked out just fine.  All of the precut poles fitted together and even the tricky diagonal corners slipped snugly into place.  I used a whole spool of bailing twine to cover the various bamboo joints and the end result gave the appearance of something out of the Swiss Family Robinson or Gilligans Island.  To fasten the cabin frame to the floor I used more recycled seat belts and each corner was attached by an exhaust clamp from off a Mack truck. 

From an overhanging branch I covered the entire cabin area with a large nursery style shadecloth that had long plastic zippers at both ends.  The zippers were a real advantage as they made perfect front and back doors, which would provide some protection in the mosquito infested backwaters.  Over the shadecloth I layed a big, yellow tarp which at some stage had been used to cover a coal loaded train carriage.  At the front of the vessel the tarp protruded past the end of the shade cloth by about three feet and it formed a lovely little foredeck verandah from which I could drop my anchor and absorb the breathtaking riverside views.  My secluded inlet had been the perfect place to put the main structure for the houseboat together but tucked in among the mangroves I was missing out on the more spectacular scenery the river had to offer.  Having made no enquiries about things like mooring fees and the like I decided to risk detection by the authorities and tow the vessel onto the main arm of the river, where my view might include the surrounding hills and mountains. The outboard motor proved severely undersized for the task of towing the houseboat. Painfully it smoked and strained like it was on the brink of seizure until I finally reached my new mooring.  I dropped anchor on a white sandy bend which was bordered on one side by pristine rainforest and on the other there were large rolling dunes leading down to the surf.  My new surroundings were majestic to say the least and the best part was at days end I could watch the setting sun flash gold and orange patterns on the water. The long dead, volcanic obelisks of Mount warning and Chincogan loomed in the distant haze of the afternoon and I knew that I was where I was meant to be.  The structure of the houseboat was pretty well complete but there was still a lot more to do on the inside to make it feel like home.  I did regular bamboo runs up the river to gather the precious harvest until the inner walls were lined with spilt bamboo slats, held in place by a thousand recycled screws.  Three windows were incorporated into the cabin structure by placing bamboo caps horizontally over the ends of preshortened poles.  At the rear of the vessel I partitioned off a section which was open to the elements but for the shadecloth and this is where I set up my kitchen. 

The secondhand dealer fixed me up with a caravan sized kitchen sink which I mounted on a bamboo divider extending from the back wall of the cabin.  I then installed an old fashioned ice box under the sink which was regularly filled with bags of ice from a nearby garage. The finishing touch to my floating hideaway was an eco-inspired flag which was attached to a long bamboo pole.  The flag depicts the encircled continents of the earth on a rainbow backdrop and it was given to me by the renowned Nimbin artist ‘Benny Zabel’.  He’s the guy that you see at all of the rallies and blockade actions wearing a gas mask and a long, slogan covered black gown.  He roars scathing prophesies of doom through a megaphone on the six o’clock news and waves a placard saying ’End The Environmental Madness Of The World’. Engrossed in home improvements in my sub tropical wonderland the frontline seemed eons away so that flag helped to make me feel like I was still a part of the movement.

A flag for the planet what a great idea ...

sing it to the children start today.

A picture of the earth sitting right in the middle,

when planetry consciousness is here to stay

and we will let the little children lead the way.

                                                                                                                                 

                                                          Mount Chincogan.

When the ocean tide is at it’s lowest the sand becomes relatively firm and it was possible to ride my pushbike the fourteen mile stretch of beach into Byron bay.  That was fine if I felt like doing some beach fishing along the way but if not it was just another time consuming drag.  A trailbike seemed the most practical solution to my problem so I started checking out the bike stores and newspapers to see what was around.  All of the local motorcycle retailers were out of my price range and even the older secondhand models were beyond my worth.  Bill told me of a mate he had up in the hills who had recently bought a place in Port Douglas and was selling most of his belongings before he moved.  As it turned out the guy was a seasoned grower who had been supplying the area with sweet smelling buds for more than three decades.  For the sake of the story we will call our Hillbilly marijuana farmer ‘Buddy’.

Among his vast assortment of agricultural equipment Buddy had a bush battered XL 250 Honda trailbike that he had used since it was new to establish the crops.  The mirrors, lights and indicators had all been scraped away in his travels but it fired up first time and had heaps of grunt left in the engine.  Buddy looked familiar and it came out in our conversation that he had been on the frontline at Chealundi.  He was one of those illusive tree spikers who always kept a low public profile but got the job done when it came to saving the old growth forest.  Buddy made a little speech about how “Us Activists” should help each other out in this dog eat dog world and he offered me the bike for what ever I could afford to pay.  As luck would have it I had just pulled off a scam in Byron where I unloaded some of Bill’s weed to a tourist and made a three hundred dollar profit.  Buddy accepted one hundred and fifty dollars for the bike and the deal was formalised with a bong session and strong, manly hugs by reunited comrades.  The trailbike was given to me by Buddy on the understanding  it could never be registered for use on the road.  It had narrowly escaped the long arm of the law in a number of high speed mountain track chases and he wanted to leave for NQ assured that it would never be traced back to him.  I gave him my solemn word that it would always remain unregistered as we loaded it into the back of Bill’s ute and covered it with a sturdy hemp tarpaulin.  We hauled the bike as close as we could get to the river and unloaded it when the sandy tracks finally bogged the ute.  I made the stupid mistake of waiting until Bill had driven off before I tried to kick the thing over and guess what?  It was a good job I found a tool set under the seat otherwise it would have been a long, sand bogged push back to my camp.  After removing the accumulated carbon buildup from the sparkplug the third or fourth kick got it moving. The council rangers did regular patrols along the beach in four wheel drives so I had to plan my runs to Byron around their daily routines.  A couple of times as I was still getting used to their movements I found myself confronted by a rangers vehicle coming the other way along the beach.  Luckily I spotted them when they were well off in the distance and executed hasty detours into the dunes.  My tire tracks would have been a dead give away to any over zealous council official so once I was in among the wetland thickets I had to zig zag around a bit to create a dead end track.  After the rangers had vanished up the beach in the other direction I scrambled back down the dunes and resumed my trip into Byron.  The banks of my little lagoon on the Billongil served as a regular stash spot for the trailbike and any overnight camping gear I might have with me.  The bike was chained and padlocked among a cluster of vines and palm fronds that concealed a second pushbike I used while I was in town.  The backup tredly had a plastic covered bedroll strapped to the handlebars and a milk crate full of handlines on the front facing carrier.  More than six months after the Billongil fishkill it was still unsafe to fish in the estuary but whiting, bream and flathead were easy to catch just off the beach in front of Strop Cornell’s pub.  During the week I kept pretty much to myself just working on the script and making home improvements on the houseboat, but when the weekends came around I devoted my time to checking out the many bands that passed through from Sydney to Queensland. 

The Rails Hotel in it's hay day featured some good touring acts as did the Beach Hotel and the Great Northern.  After I was done partying away all of my spare cash I would lay my bedroll out in the dunes under a bandanna tree and wet a line.  Groups of young travellers used to get fires going on the beach and they invariably turned into late night singalongs under the enduring lights of the Southern cross.  Many is the time I have dozed off to the sound of a soft guitar or a flute as the first hint of morning lit up the watery horizon.  On one of my weekend escapades to Byron I returned to the lagoon and discovered that the trailbike was gone.  My thick, metal chain and padlock had been cut with bolt cutters and all that was left was a torn and tangled mess of vines and damaged palms.  Immediately I knew that it was the rangers because I had left a plastic bag containing some rubbish leaning up against the back wheel.  No other thief would bother to include my waste in their plunder so I set about the task of finding out where the thing was being held.  The council depot was just a short pushbike ride out towards the Pacific highway in an industrial estate and a cautious circumnavigation of the cyclone wire compound confirmed what I already knew.  One of my mates owned a surfboard shop adjoining the depot and from his back yard I could see my bike sitting among some other impounded vehicles and water craft.  I got straight on the phone to the shire council chambers and without revealing my proper name I spoke directly to the Head Ranger. The condescending shmuck informed me in a gruff tone that I had to pay a number of fines before I could have the trailbike back.

The fines included riding in a prohibited area and of all things riding an unregistered vehicle.  When I said I thought it was police business to deal with unregistered vehicles the ranger just laughed his stupid looking head off.  As it happened the coppers were in the council depot at the time filling out their reports and I was told that I could speak with them if I wanted to.  I stayed calm and made sure that I had his undivided attention before I slammed the phone down in a ear splitting, bakelite crash. The fines in total came to over six hundred dollars which was well beyond the value of the bike, so short of kissing the thing goodbye my only other option was to try to steal it back.  In a mood of sheer, justice seeking outrage I made one of those who gives a flying fuck decisions to go for broke, which meant I had to bust into the council depot and retrieve my mechanical stallion.  I speculated that my best chance of pulling it off was to bide my time and wait for just the right thundering, stormy night to make a move.  Like a crocodile stalking his prey I watched the movements of the rangers from Gary’s back yard at the surf shop.  I compiled a written list of the comings and goings at the depot and within a week I knew the most appropriate time to put my plan into action.  The security vehicle did it’s final patrol at 2.30 am and another one didn’t come past until 9.15 the following night.  If I got away with it the bike would be clear of the scene and stashed in a new location before the dumb fuck, ordinance officers clocked on for a new day of giving people the shits.

The skies stayed relatively clear for about five days then at long last a battalion of fluffy thunderheads began to gather above the sea in the East.  I could feel the mounting electrical storm in my bones and the promise of a gusty blow signalled the green light to go.  Gary knew what I was up to and he allowed me to remain in his back yard after he had closed up the shop for the night.  The bolt cutters that he lent me were smaller than the standard size and I had my fingers crossed that they would be able to get through the new chain the rangers had stuck on my bike.  The 2.30 am security patrol completed it’s last inspection and the thunderheads were yet to produce a single drop of rain.  I waited around for another hour or so contemplating a change in strategy and about quarter to four I just said,“Fuck it” and jumped the fence.  The padlock came apart after a few pinching bites from the bolt cutters and on the last cut the chain rattled noisily along the frame.  A guard dog started barking in a property adjoining the compound which made me double my speed and break into a nervous sweat.  The bolt cutters separated the cyclone wire fencing with no trouble and as I pinched away at the little wire squares the first rumbling tones of thunder echoed around the bay.  By the time I had cut the last of the wire the barking dogs were drowned out by beautiful, deep and ominous thunderclaps.  It was a tight fit to push the bike through the hole in the fence but I made it out with a couple of extra nips on the wire.  Once free of the compound I fired up the engine and rode off in a windy and thunderous downpour. The rain tasted sweet on my tongue as I laughed at the wild flashing night sky and savoured my moment of victory. 

An article appeared in the local paper a couple of days after the event which described my noble rescue mission as a ‘Theft’.  In the article the police claimed they had some leads to go on but I got away clean and they knew it.  The engine and chassis numbers had been long since ground away and I wore a pair of leather gloves to make sure I left no prints. I would have loved to have seen their faces when they discovered my handywork the next day.  In real terms I suppose all it would have meant was one less vehicle they could auction off among themselves when next they decided to clear the yard.  I saw Gary at an Epicentre dance party about a week after our adventure and he told me that the rangers had recruited a couple of nasty doberman attack dogs just after I retrieved the bike.  I shouted him to an ecstasy tab for his help and we howled at the moon to the pulsing beats of the Doof tribe.  Gary and I were smoking a joint in the gardens of the art centre when we were joined by a regular acquaintance of mine called Carl.  This bloke is an older model of party animal than most of my other friends and top shelf LSD is the only stimulant he ever consumes.  Carl was frantically peddling the last of his acid so he could go dancing with some tourist chick he had met in the dance zone.  He claimed the tabs were manufactured by the ‘Grateful Dead Crew’ in the states and they were guaranteed to blow our minds.  On top of the eccies we had consumed I treated both Gary and myself to a tab, which freed Carl up to trip the light fantastic with his new girlfriend and the rest of the rhythm struck Doofers.   Within the hour my ecstasy driven love for all mankind was catapulted into a new dimension of hallucinogenic wonders. 

Gary and I spotted Carl on the packed dance floor at the peak of our trip and the dirty old bastard was making time with a sexy young Maori chick.  Her name was Lil and she must have been at least half the geriatric, root rats age.  Lil and a group of her girlfriends had just arrived on the coach from Sydney and we were the first blokes they had spoken to since they got there.  Instantly Gary and I paired off with a couple of the other girls to go dancing and the rest were swooped up by the predators before the next heart racing track split the air.  As the night raged on all of the dancing couples shifted positions until it was established where the strongest attractions lay.  I ended up with the redhead among the flock who was an uncontrollable chatterbox and as frisky as a bucking mare in the sexual lure of spring.  Keeping up with that ‘sweet young thang’ on the dancefloor was more of a bluff than true stamina and I was ready to jump at any opportunity to get her outside to a more comfortable spot.  It was impossible to converse over the sound of the blasting trance music so we exited for the bar in the tropical gardens adjoining the partyzone.  The girls name was Alicia and as soon as she found out that I was tripping and on E she went into a kind of feeding frenzy. It didn’t subside until I called over one of my fast moving drug dealer colleagues and made a score.  As the stimulants kicked in we hung out on the beach beside a roaring campfire which had been set up as a chill zone.  Guitars were strumming old favourites from the hippy trail as the mood adjusters did their thing and before long Alicia was in my arms and being seductively wooed. We were joined by the others at the fire some time later and Carl agreed to drop us off where I had stashed the Honda.  After their very hectic night of dancing he and Lil were planning to chill out in the dunes and Alicia said that she really wanted to see my houseboat on the Brunswick river.  Carl’s combi couldn’t make it all the way into where the trailbike was hidden so we bid them farewell at a highway crossing and walked a short distance into the moonlit swamp.  Once we were mobile on the bike I moved at an easy pace along the beach as the stars peeked through rows of ponytail clouds and the moon spread a silvery triangle across the sea.  Even though I wasn’t going that fast Alicia held on for dear life which got my sexual magneto revving faster than the one in the engine.  Along the way we spotted a large flock of gulls that took to the air on our approach and flew in front of the bike for about three miles.  I sensed that our slow, windy ride was blowing some of the big smoke bullshit out of Alicia’s system and I smiled to myself wondering how she was going to react to my floating castle on the river.  After a bumpy scramble through the dunes and wetland terrain we arrived at my campsite and I got a fire going on the bank.  The houseboat was illuminated in it’s moorings like something from a Hollywood fantasy romance as I scrambled along the half submerged log it was tied to and jumped onto the foredeck.  Then I lowered the gang plank so Alicia could come on board and view my handiwork.  When she entered the candle lit boudoir approval showed on her face and the mood was further enhanced with soft ambient music from my battery powered hi-fi.  The bamboo mounted double bed was really the only place for us to sit down, so we both did and I proceeded to chat away about my river dwelling adventure until the vertical position was abandoned for a more chummy, horizontal mode.

                                                                                                                                 

                                      Alica arriving from the backpackers hostel.

After an initial stay of only two days on the houseboat Alicia picked up her backpack at the young travellers hostel and moved in with me.  That sort of thing was just typical of her spontaneous, get up and go spirit and she adapted quickly to my river dwelling ways.  Her presence somehow completed my tropical houseboat adventure and made things even more exciting than they already were.  Every morning just after sunrise we would slip naked into the water so we could watch for any sign of our wild neighbours.  A water crane or some other such wonderful creature might come into view from beneath the dawnlit mangroves and we would be transfixed by the image from a water level perspective.  One time we were treated to a group of six wallabies who came stomping through the mudflats at high speed.  Alicia was floating face up at the time, and she swore that she could feel the thud of their feet vibrating through the water.

 My fishing lines were always cast and waiting in the dingy as we took our early morning swims and the sound of a spinning handline signalled that it was time to get out and prepare breakfast.  Without fail a salted pilchard would land us a good sized flathead and mullet gut in a salty brine was sure to deliver a hefty bream.  One muggy, cicadae chirping night I couldn’t sleep and I was watching the ‘Rage’ program on my miniature bedside TV.  Impervious to my insomnia Alicia was slumbering peacefully and I wanted her to wake up so we could make love.  Each snugly advance I made was met with little moans of hot summers night discomfort, so I had to invent some way of luring her away from dreamland.  The slow distinctive drag of a handline suddenly caught my attention which meant that some late night feeder was walking off with the mullet frame I tossed overboard before we went to bed.  The line came up easily from under the pontoons and a dirty great, buck male mud crab was clutching onto the fish frame. I attempted to drop the monster into a bucket by dying candlelight but the thing let go of the frame and scurried off sideways under the bed.  Alicia had started to stir with all of the commotion and when I told her there was a crab under the bed she sprung back into consciousness at lightening speed.  The offending intruder was netted by torchlight and placed in a sealed bucket for breakfast.  I came out from under the bed and Alicia still had her bum in the air scanning the floor with a torch.  In that very special moment as I beheld the inviting form of my twenty two year old sweetheart I smiled the secret mischievous smile of a horny, thirty five year old beach bum who was just about to receive his just deserts. 

I feel like a king when I’m with you ... and you are the queen of my heart

we are the new way of Adam and Eve and nothing ... could keep us ... apart.