Kookaburra Laughs

Just settin’ myself down to a nice cuppa on a blustery Tassie afternoon. Cozy time to contemplate life and appreciate the shelter of friends.

Travel takes one outside of oneself, and offers moments of clarity. Sometimes a good book can do it, too. For me now, perhaps a little of both.

Three Cups of Tea, the tale of Greg Mortenson, climber turned school-builder in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the most inspirational thing I think I’ve ever read. I’ve been devouring it on the flights, at times moved to tears I try to hide my tears from fellow passengers.

Lyn and Geoff, my hosts, greet me at the airport. Lyn bubbles about an orphanage in Cambodia she visited this year, and her conviction to help not only with her volunteer efforts while she was there, but also by organizing a fund-raising athletic event near Hobart. Her face is alight and her eyes sparkle with excitement.

“Spirit dwells in you, as you.” A line from in-flight movie Eat, Pray, Love. Live true to your heart and as fully as you can, and spirit will use your unique blend of talent and personality to do good things.

What is a Good Thing? Does it have to benefit 1,000 people? Save nature? Further human understanding? It may. Or perhaps it encourages one person. Lyn’s mother sits this week in hospital with her dying partner as he slips into unconsciousness, and beyond. Maybe in the Good Thing one is called to do, one’s own soul finds balance. One more instrument in the grand orchestra plays in harmony for a few bars.

I take Jed the old dog for a walk today. He lost his lifelong buddy recently and has since stayed very close to the humans in his life. He comes to me at the computer often for a reassuring scratch. The air is fresh in the damp bush through which the trail meanders. Kookaburra laughs from his perch in a gum tree.

Kayaking may be the pretext under which I’m here, but I’m convinced that the real reasons are much bigger, and unfathomable to me at the moment. It is my dedication to a passion—a recreational sport—that has brought me to this place. What an unlikely vehicle. I am inexpressibly humbled. I believe that if one follows one’s deep passion with dedication and honesty, it will be a spiritually rewarding journey. The kayak is just a tool. Such a frivolous one, yet somehow it feels elemental to me.

Is the Good Thing the project itself (kayaking lifestyle) or is the greater good the process of learning, submitting, being aware? Anything is possible. No matter what happens it’s ok.

Monsoon rains continue to wash away northern Australia, leaving heartbreaking stories in their wake. Grocery stores post flyers and take relief donations at the checkout counter. The national defense has been mobilized to help. Sometimes it’s hard to see any good in tragedy. Sometimes “No matter what happens it’s ok” sounds ridiculous and haughty.

On the small scale of our lives, strong Tasmanian easterlies (30-40kts) have flattened out the swell and threaten to blow kayakers to kingdom come. Our kayaking plans adjust daily, and yesterday we all stayed home. That means time for Axel and me to begin building a website for Lyn’s Cambodian Children’s Trust Challenge. Somehow, despite our plans, things fall into the places where they belong.

Aussie shark stories

At Sally’s party, some of my new paddling mates were talking about shark attacks on kayakers. That is casual conversation among Aussie paddlers.

Rob told stories of a kayaker meeting a rower on the sea and the rower asking if the kayaker had been seeing all the sharks along the coast. The kayaker had not, but then kayakers look forward and the sharks normally follow the slowest member of a group, waiting for their chance to pick off the weak ones. The rower was of course looking back all the time, so he saw them. I think I’d rather be looking forward!

Aussies kayakers are mostly unbothered by sharks. Its crocks they fear. When sharks taste a kayak, or for that matter, a human, they usually bite and let go. Crocks actually have humans on the menu. Crocks hunt intelligently and will stalk kayakers and campers.

One kayaker unknowingly camped in the company of a large crock who emerged from the mangroves shortly before dark. She’d heard that a fire will stave off a hungry crock, and quickly gathered all the driftwood she could find on the tiny island. She lit a fire, and the crock backed away. As the fire died, it advanced again.

She set her watch for an hour, and stoked the fire every hour through the night. Each time it died down, the crock was a little closer. She launched early the next morning.

Approaching a cove the next afternoon, another crock bigger than her kayak trailed her. It began nipping at the stern. She made a beeline for the shore, jumped out, and ran up a hill. The crock chomped onto the stern of the kayak and thrashed it about for 15 minutes or so before deciding it was inedible while on land. It retreated to the water where it set to pacing from one side of the cove to the other. All afternoon.

The kayaker got her sat phone from the kayak and called in a motor boat pickup to end her trip. When the motorboat came the next morning, the crock was still pacing.

Crocks have historically eaten aboriginals, and vice versa. The most respected were crock hunters. Now, without the aboriginals controlling the population to the same extent, there are more and bigger saltwater crocks than in remembered history.

The only people allowed to kill crocks are aboriginals. One man was camped with friends on an island, and a crock pulled the friend from his tent in the night and began chomping on him. The man’s 60-year old mother leapt to his aid, jumped astride the crock and started clubbing it. The crock turned on the mom, so the aboriginal man shot it. They called in emergency services. On the sandy beach a crew set up a makeshift aid station, using the dead crock as a table to keep the medical tools out of the sand.

Thankfully for me, crocks reside on the northern, more tropical part of Australia, and not around Sydney where I was paddling. Neither did I see a shark. But then, I tried not to look back too much.