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What a fantastic labour weekend we have just had. Summer is certainly on it’s way.
Despite that we are still right in the middle of renovations, we decided to invite good friends Wendy, Andrew and Brian along for the long weekend. This forced us to clear a space in the lounge and dining room, and make the chalets habitable for our impending guests. Nothing like a deadline to get some progress on our project. Sadly American daytime TV would have to wait for a while.
A typical scene over the weekend (eating)
The lushes from the mainland arrived, and we began our gastronomical experience. We ate our way around the island, starting with the Labour Weekend Market Day at Claris where we scored lovely locally baked doughnuts and lamingtons. Then it was off to the Wild Rose Cafe for gourmet burgers, then to the Angsana Thai Restaurant for a fantastic Thai meal. Given that our kitchen was still in a state of disrepair, much of the cooking was diverted to the BBQ or other venues.
More eating
On Sunday, we made up a picnic hamper of club sandwiches, lamingtons, and other delectables, and headed with our beach umbrellas and blankets to Awana Beach on the other side of the island.
Beautiful Awana Beach
More eating, some napping, a beach to ourselves, and an attempt at swimming by some of the party made for a wonderful afternoon.
Life's a beach
But the guests weren’t getting off lightly. There was a cunning plan buried into their invitation to the island. Sitting out in the garage was our 300kg sandstone kitchen bench, and this needed lifting into the kitchen and onto the newly installed cabinetry. So with stomachs filled, a lifting plan was devised, and the bench was inched out of the garage using stools and loaded onto the quad bike and trailer. Then it was inched across the garden, and carefully lifted up the steps and into the kitchen. Half an hour of careful lifting, and the beast was in place. There is now some light at the end of the tunnel for our renovations.
Stop smiling and start lifting!
Yay, we finally have a kitchen bench again
Labour Day (Monday) came, and the guests were now in a state of induced unconsciousness, a result of the beach blobbing, heavy lifting, and the sherry trifle I’d made the day before. The Barrier forces you to relax. The sea was as calm as a millpond, so we decided to launch the boat and go fishing.
Wendy had never been fishing before. Each time the fish bit at the bait, she’d let out a shriek, scaring all the big snapper away. Sadly we only caught small fish, which all had to be thrown back. Then as we came ashore, others who had been out fishing just around the point delighted in telling us of the huge fish they’d been catching. So with no fresh fish for lunch, we had homemade BBQ pizzas instead.
No Wendy, we can't eat that!
I’m now addicted to American daytime soap TV – well, one show in particular – ‘As the World Turns’ and it’s story about Luke and Noah. I must have been hiding under a rock for the past couple of years (or on an island), to have missed the TV soap sensation that took place exactly on my birthday two years ago. It was the first ever gay kiss on American daytime TV, and it took the serial from the bottom of the ratings to third place under ‘Young and the Restless’ and ‘The Bold and the Beautiful.
Luke is a young gay man who has recently ‘come out’, and Noah is in a relationship with a woman named Maddie, however Noah and Luke develop feelings for each other and tension forms between the pair over a number of episodes. Luke doesn’t want to pursue Noah because Maddie (Noah’s girlfriend) is his friend too, and he doesn’t want to risk being rejected by Noah (a previous friend Kevin rejected Luke after he made advances on him). Noah wants to please his father and live a straight life with Maddie. The tension builds and spills over in the following scene, which is now one of the most viewed scenes in YouTube’s history. (I suspect that there would have been a significant increase in the number of 911 calls from rest homes across America reporting cardiac collapses and shortness-of-breath after this segment went to air!)
Gosh, when I saw this, it reminded me of when I was on an international exchange with the Ship for World Youth. I was actually at a conference in Tokyo, and the delegates had to dress in special clothing for a dinner ceremony. Mr Brazil came to help me sort my tie, and a scene like above took place, but without the kiss. The tension continued to build over the week, until a scene like above did occur. Sadly things did not progress – Mr Brazil had ‘Noah’ issues, and my Brazilian episode ended in pain (heartache, not a raw red hairless rash down below), which is probably a good thing otherwise I wouldn’t have met Peter, and this website would probably be called ‘my brazillian’ instead of ‘my island’.
I was up till 3am last night watching re-runs of ‘As the World Turns’ on YouTube. Tragic I know – but I was just amazed at the honesty and length the show goes to to outline the issues facing Noah and Luke, and basically gay couples all over the world. Finding love in the gay world is difficult – a smaller population, and huge issues around people hiding or dealing with their sexuality. And despite there being supposed mainstream acceptance, this was the first gay couple on daytime TV, and this was only back in 2007.
If you’re thinking of watching ‘As the World Turns’ be prepared that it is also trashy. Luke and Noah’s issues and chemistry obviously get the audience tuning in, but then soap TV mentality takes over, with Noah’s dad being a homophobic retired Army Colonel who tries to kill Luke on a fishing trip for leading his son astray (oh, dad also killed Noah’s birth mother a way back too). Luke is pushed down a bank, sustains a spinal injury, and is put in a wheelchair. However, many episodes later (up till 3am remember), the bond between Luke and Noah becomes so great that Luke is motivated to walk again, all because of Noah’s support. It was hard to know whether to grab the chunder bucket or the sniffle tissues at times.
Fortunately me and Peter have created our own soap opera on our little island on the Hauraki Gulf. Luke and Noah are simply a reminder of the difficult journey getting here, and the importance of relationships in one’s life. So go hug the significant other in your life if you have one. Life is short, so make the most of every day you have with your someone special. Even better, move to an island and start watching daytime soap operas in your spare time, and then you’ll start wondering where the day went!
This used to be one of my favourite songs as a kid: “The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hip hooray!”. My Uncle Dud used it play it on the record player he built himself. It took up one whole wall of his workshop, and had lots of valves as large as light bulbs that had to warm up before the copper needle the size of a pencil lead could pull the music off the old 78’s he had stashed in his shack. Us kids thought Uncle Dud’s gizmos were great. MOTAT would probably be interested in the contraption too if it still was in existence.
Today the sun certainly had his hat on. After what seems like weeks of rain and wind, it has been lovely to be greeted by two days of clear blue skies.
We’ve been up finishing the flashing on the roof of the two new chalets. Soon I’ll be able to start sorting out the insides of them.
Don't jump!
Yesterday we spent the day putting our solar water heating system back together. Soon Mr Sun, resplendent in his millinery, can sizzle up our water so that once again we have a cylinder full of the hot stuff. Because I’ve pulled out everything else sensible that worked, we are only able to heat water using gas at the moment. Not as green and eco-friendly as we are wanting to be.
Solar hot water system almost back together again
The Wharf 2 Wharf event was a tremendous success. We had 100 entries, which is big by Great Barrier standards, and everyone seemed to have lots of fun (which I still find confusing, as how can running, cycling, or walking 42 kilometres be fun). Our house became the Great Barrier Island Ambulance Station for the week, as I had an ambulance shipped over from the mainland for the event. Fortunately there were only a few minor injuries, and these were well concealed by thick layers of mud. The recent weeks of rain had turned the off-road sections of the course into a mud bath.
Spot the VW hidden in this picture
It was great to have been a part of this event, as it was fantastic way to network with the locals.
Our dear friend Stess providing race support in her racy supports
Yesterday the Spirit of New Zealand sailed into the harbour, as did a pod of 22 dolphins. It certainly feels like summer is on the way.
Ahoy Captain Cook, we've already been discovered!
I’ve been helping out on the organising committee of the local Wharf 2 Wharf event. It is taking place this Saturday, and is a 42km run, walk, or cycle from the top end of the island to the bottom.
I thought I’d get involved to get to know some of the locals, help build local networks, and show an interest in my new community. Unfortunately my big mouth got me lumbered with lots to do. I started off just being the St John rep, then became the Safety rep, then one of the key organising committee members, then the glamorous person who gets to paint all the safety road signage in his spare time. You see we’re fundraising for one of the local schools, so we’re doing everything on a very strict budget (oh, and I had to write the budget too).
So 25 pages of the Safety Plan and Traffic Management Plan later, I’d planned for every contingency, and Auckland City Council were presented with a comprehensive plan in exchange for an event permit. The locals were horrified that council was insisting upon a permit this year – here on the Barrier, everyone believes we’re exempt from that sort of thing. The fact a herd of mainland Police and Vehicle Inspectors have just finished assessing and ticketing people for no WOF and registration has also caused some consternation over here. So when I suggested a comprehensive traffic management plan for this event, I was reduced to painting my own signs and making use of the handful of road cones the island possesses. But I managed to wear the committee down and they allowed me to go to the $2 shop on the mainland to buy some hi-viz vests. Yes, we splashed out.
My call to action came the other day when the Race Director suddenly had to leave the island for a funeral, and asked if I would run the Marshals briefing. Now, those St John readers amongst you will know that I relish in delivering a good briefing. Powerpoint displays, video footage, and lots of arm waving usually (one year I used a megaphone at the Big Day Out, but some sod removed the batteries ahead of the afternoon shift briefing, and the next year the megaphone went ‘missing’ just before the event, so I guessed I shouldn’t use a megaphone for this event).
Armed with copies of Safety Plans and maps (a small forest was cleared on the island to provide the paper needed for all the guff I gave the poor Marshals), the briefing was delivered to the packed lunchroom at the Claris Police Station, and those still awake at the end of it said I did quite well. My ‘opportunity to shine’ had come and passed just like that. The chocolate bikkies put out by the local constabulary were consumed with great haste by the locals (I think that was their highlight of the briefing), and then they all departed, leaving our poor cops with nothing to eat for morning tea for the rest of the week.
Tomorrow I have an ambulance being shipped over for the event (weather and seas permitting). Then on Friday I drive round putting up road signs, and on Saturday it’s a 5am start to save lives and dish out plasters. Our event of only 100 competitors is a far cry from the 10,000 runners who go to the Auckland Marathon, or the 80,000 who go to Round the Bays. But you have to start somewhere…
Tiling behind the wood stove
We have done some work on the house in between organising a race. The tiles could finally go on the wall now that we’ve finished all the demolition work. I kept wanting to tile so that I could get the stove working, but realised that I’d crack all the newly-laid tiles if I kept swinging the sledge hammer about the place.
Almost finished
We’ve finally got the stove back in place, and for the first time in several months, I got the wood stove going and cooked up a storm. Oven baked pork and potatoes, creamy rice pudding, and chocolate butterscotch slice all emerged from it’s cast iron belly. I’d missed having an oven, and was sick of having to cook everything on a single gas ring.
Stanley, the Irish-made wood fired stove, back in action
Another glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel: despite there being no walls in the pantry/Butler’s kitchen, I still managed to jam the dishwasher in it’s new spot and get it going. No more boiling up water on the gas ring to get the dishes done each day.
With this sudden cold snap, it’s great to have Stanley (the oven) back in action. Now we just need some fine weather so I can put the solar water heating system back together on it’s new perch.
