A Grand Day Out…

Last year was somewhat of a milestone birthday and as it passed, I made a mini-Bucket List (sort of child’s beach-bucket size) of all the things I want to do between now and whenever.

It involved things like a helicopter ride to my favourite place. A light aircraft ride to a world recognized wilderness area. Visits to all the parts of this absolutely beautiful state that I have never seen because I’ve been too busy visiting overseas places, or too busy looking after family, or too busy living in cities away from Tasmania, or too busy ‘being’ on the coast. Scuba-diving lessons. (Not sure about this one as I am claustrophobic, which come to think of it may affect the helicopter and the light aircraft, but on the plus side I love swimming underwater.) Climb to the top of Mount Maria and so on…

But it’s all very well to have lists. Sometimes living life to the full each day involves the simplest things. Like the kayak trip I did with friends a few days ago. We are a group of disparate women who all got together and bought kayaks almost ten years ago. In those days, we would be out on the beach at 7.30, paddling any number of miles up and down the coast. We’ve been in sea-caves, got caught in massive swells and windstorms, paddled with dolphins and fairy penguins, seen sharks (not the dangerous ones), skuas, albatross, sea-eagles and muttonbirds.

Over the years, our group has shrunk as injuries have weakened us. Some summers we didn’t even kayak together at all, just went off on our own. These days, we are rarely on the kayaks before 10 AM and our distances are reduced by the time it takes for back injuries, wrist injuries, shoulder injuries and even ankle injuries to manifest with a bit of pain. But we keep going and when the pain takes hold, we realize we’ve achieved something!

Meeting on Christmas Eve for drinks, we all decided a memorial kayak, A Grand Day Out, was the thing to do before any of us got too damned infirm to do anything! But as we did our normal jaunts, the Grand Day Out seemed to drift further away until someone said let’s go river-kayaking inland, something we rarely do.

The day was pristine blue, the river smooth and flat as a piece of taupe satin. Reeds and cumbungi (bulrushes) fringed the riverbank. Black swans provided a guard detail and parrots and kookaburras sounded an alarm. The arrival of the ute loaded with our kayaks acted as a call to the sheep grazing in the bush, no doubt thinking we were delivering hay and they swiftly surrounded the ute and just as swiftly left when no feed eventuated. We paddled under a swinging bridge, used historically to enable the property owners to get to the highway in times of high flood. We paddled round obscure little islands … swathes of trees deposited on mudbanks in floods, thus providing an environment for things to grow as the levels receded so that year after year the islands grew exponentially. We hoped to see evidence of a platypus but they are shy and instead we glimpsed rat holes tucked under the folds of the riverbank and I expected to see Ratty calling out: There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’

Eventually we made landing at a delicious country house where we were invited to coffee and biscotti on the croquet lawn as the sheepdogs pelted around. Normally we kayak to the sound of seabreezes, to waves breaking on a rocky coast, to the slap of a swell against the sides of the kayak, the sting of salt on hands and faces … being wet is ‘de rigeur’. We sip water from bottles and if we picnic we snack on dry biscuits and cheese, nuts, and fresh and dried fruit. This was so different, so special, it really was…

… a grand day out!