It’s been an interesting life, thus far….
I grew up on the banks of the Derwent River in Hobart, Tasmania, watching the yachts racing around the buoys each weekend. At the ripe old age of 12, I convinced dad to buy me an International Cadet or ‘butter box’ as they were affectionately referred to. As often happens, the smallest things can sometimes have the most profound impact and a life long love affair kicked off.
The International Cadet soon became a Fireball as my need for speed settled in. I’d always been what they called in those days ‘hyperactive’ although in recent years the condition has attracted more fashionable monikers. Anyone with too much energy that has been to sea will understand why getting on the water became and remains where I feel most at home.
I started commercial fishing when I was 16, the first or second of a number of times I dropped out of school, mainly through boredom and an enquiring mind that obviously frustrated the generally dim witted and often sadistic teachers I suffered at various catholic schools. Is that a chip still sitting on my shoulder after all these years; possibly? Stay tuned, it could make for reminiscence sometime, although it would cause a few old bastards to turn in their graves. But I digress.
South west Tasmania is recognised as having one of the most treacherous coast lines in the world and the men that fished those waters were necessarily hard. The weather could turn deadly in an hour or two and poaching other fishermen's pots could result in guns being pulled off the rack in the wheelhouse. The old adage about fishermen and the four ‘Fs’ was a legitimate way of describing how many of them lived their lives. A fight, a feed, a fish and a f…
But, they were good seamen, some of the best I’ve ever known. While many were uneducated, they all knew the ways of the sea and could sniff a change in the weather well before the glass (barometer) started dropping.
I spent the next fifteen years alternately fishing, roaming around the country and the rest of the world, ocean racing, doing various property deals and working in the family pub. Intermingled in that life were stints at the Australian Maritime College in Launceston, studying the theory behind the practicalities of life at sea.
My Sydney Hobart yacht racing started in 1981 and now with 14 odd ‘Hobarts’ under my belt I may yet do one or two more, although the attraction of being wet, cold and miserable has been displaced by the shed on our cruising yacht, Golden Haze, affectionately also known as Tubby.
Professional yacht deliveries worked their way into my life during the eighties, with the post Sydney Hobart period often deciding for me what the coming year would bring. I spent time on the old Apollo, Anaconda 2, Freight Train and other of the old maxis, part of an era now long gone, but they were great boats and great blokes to sail with. Sometimes I could be found carting yachts across the Great Australian Bight to Perth and then staying on for a while to do some boat racing. Other times heading north and ending up in Sydney or occasionally out in the Pacific somewhere.
I have the vivid memory of having invited a girl friend out for dinner a few days after I’d finished one Hobart race. She told me later that she realised she’d been stood up when she was watching TV, all dressed up to the nines, while waiting for me to collect her. As she saw me on the ABC news, sailing out of Constitution dock on a Sydney Hobart yacht bound for Perth she realised that sailing had once again usurped top priority in my life.
Always the two loves for me to draw on; Tasmania and the water. The more I saw of the world the more I realised what a superb place Tasmania was and while I couldn’t resist the urge to go, the need to come home only ever grew larger as time passed. At fifty nine, I’m still driven by the same fundamentals.
In the late eighties I managed to marry one of that rare breed of woman, a girl who was too good for me. In pretty short order a couple of kids turned up, Alex, who sailed in his first yacht race when he was three weeks old and Tess, who from memory went straight to our boat from the hospital.
Al is now in the final stages of getting his Foreign Going Master’s ticket and Tess has done her fair share of deliveries with me over the years. When she is not off saving the world, (thank God we have people like that in our lives) she still comes cruising occasionally, although usually under sufferance, just so she can hang out with her dear old dad.
Married life saw me start up and grow a retail business in nursery furniture which in turn led into establishing a pretty significant furniture manufacturing company and my involvement with government, money and politics. The company went on to become the largest operation of its kind in Australia. Sadly the business suffered from severe growth pains and in the late nineties it was picked off by a couple of greed driven, opportunistic cowards that eventually got their just desserts. Is that another chip, or maybe just a cold hard reality? Stay tuned for this story.
This loss led to the dark years, a period that came pretty close to killing me and which fundamentally changed my life, eventually for the better, although the scars were a long time in healing. (See “The Black Dog” coming soon.) My recuperation took the form of a Philosophy/English degree at Utas, during which time I came to realise that you never do end up where you expect. So the rest of my life would be more focused on enjoying the journey, a subtle but huge change in the way I viewed the world. I funded the period with more yacht deliveries and driving ferries on the Derwent River.
In 2006 Al and I headed to France to deliver Helsal 4 to Hobart via the Panama Canal. (See ‘A Tale of Two Oceans’) Following this, The Australian Maritime College beckoned again and I re-sat the Master 4 ticket I’d done back in the 80’s, then did a few hard yards, carting cattle and crackers (dynamite) across Bass Strait on a Bass Strait barge called the Mathew Flinders. Around the same time I very luckily managed to hook up with Vic, another of that rare breed of woman that was too good for me, but one I decided I was definitely going to hang on to.
As the cow shit on the Mathew Flinders piled up around my ankles along with the unwashed dishes in the galley sink and the Bass Strait gales blew on relentlessly, I figured there must be a better way to make a buck at sea.
Enter Jeremy Williams. Jeremy ran a budding young vessel/manning company out of Point Samson in far North Western Australia, servicing the iron ore construction industry. He started getting regular phone calls from me pestering him for a job. During one such discussion he lamented that in all probability I wasn’t going to stop annoying him until he took me on. I just smiled and agreed and he gracefully succumbed. I hopped on the next plane out of Hobart and flew straight into the mining industry, where I still am today.
Over the past forty odd years since I first left home (something I did a number of times) I’ve enjoyed many roles in many arenas. At various times I could be found working on Standards Australia committees, entering into hard fisted negotiations with politicians or bankers, or sailing the world’s oceans. I’ve been rich and poor a few times and I’ve witnessed, suffered and enjoyed a hugely fascinating and varied life. I hope you find some of the stories in this blog half as entertaining as their creation has been.
The International Cadet soon became a Fireball as my need for speed settled in. I’d always been what they called in those days ‘hyperactive’ although in recent years the condition has attracted more fashionable monikers. Anyone with too much energy that has been to sea will understand why getting on the water became and remains where I feel most at home.
I started commercial fishing when I was 16, the first or second of a number of times I dropped out of school, mainly through boredom and an enquiring mind that obviously frustrated the generally dim witted and often sadistic teachers I suffered at various catholic schools. Is that a chip still sitting on my shoulder after all these years; possibly? Stay tuned, it could make for reminiscence sometime, although it would cause a few old bastards to turn in their graves. But I digress.
South west Tasmania is recognised as having one of the most treacherous coast lines in the world and the men that fished those waters were necessarily hard. The weather could turn deadly in an hour or two and poaching other fishermen's pots could result in guns being pulled off the rack in the wheelhouse. The old adage about fishermen and the four ‘Fs’ was a legitimate way of describing how many of them lived their lives. A fight, a feed, a fish and a f…
But, they were good seamen, some of the best I’ve ever known. While many were uneducated, they all knew the ways of the sea and could sniff a change in the weather well before the glass (barometer) started dropping.
I spent the next fifteen years alternately fishing, roaming around the country and the rest of the world, ocean racing, doing various property deals and working in the family pub. Intermingled in that life were stints at the Australian Maritime College in Launceston, studying the theory behind the practicalities of life at sea.
My Sydney Hobart yacht racing started in 1981 and now with 14 odd ‘Hobarts’ under my belt I may yet do one or two more, although the attraction of being wet, cold and miserable has been displaced by the shed on our cruising yacht, Golden Haze, affectionately also known as Tubby.
Professional yacht deliveries worked their way into my life during the eighties, with the post Sydney Hobart period often deciding for me what the coming year would bring. I spent time on the old Apollo, Anaconda 2, Freight Train and other of the old maxis, part of an era now long gone, but they were great boats and great blokes to sail with. Sometimes I could be found carting yachts across the Great Australian Bight to Perth and then staying on for a while to do some boat racing. Other times heading north and ending up in Sydney or occasionally out in the Pacific somewhere.
I have the vivid memory of having invited a girl friend out for dinner a few days after I’d finished one Hobart race. She told me later that she realised she’d been stood up when she was watching TV, all dressed up to the nines, while waiting for me to collect her. As she saw me on the ABC news, sailing out of Constitution dock on a Sydney Hobart yacht bound for Perth she realised that sailing had once again usurped top priority in my life.
Always the two loves for me to draw on; Tasmania and the water. The more I saw of the world the more I realised what a superb place Tasmania was and while I couldn’t resist the urge to go, the need to come home only ever grew larger as time passed. At fifty nine, I’m still driven by the same fundamentals.
In the late eighties I managed to marry one of that rare breed of woman, a girl who was too good for me. In pretty short order a couple of kids turned up, Alex, who sailed in his first yacht race when he was three weeks old and Tess, who from memory went straight to our boat from the hospital.
Al is now in the final stages of getting his Foreign Going Master’s ticket and Tess has done her fair share of deliveries with me over the years. When she is not off saving the world, (thank God we have people like that in our lives) she still comes cruising occasionally, although usually under sufferance, just so she can hang out with her dear old dad.
Married life saw me start up and grow a retail business in nursery furniture which in turn led into establishing a pretty significant furniture manufacturing company and my involvement with government, money and politics. The company went on to become the largest operation of its kind in Australia. Sadly the business suffered from severe growth pains and in the late nineties it was picked off by a couple of greed driven, opportunistic cowards that eventually got their just desserts. Is that another chip, or maybe just a cold hard reality? Stay tuned for this story.
This loss led to the dark years, a period that came pretty close to killing me and which fundamentally changed my life, eventually for the better, although the scars were a long time in healing. (See “The Black Dog” coming soon.) My recuperation took the form of a Philosophy/English degree at Utas, during which time I came to realise that you never do end up where you expect. So the rest of my life would be more focused on enjoying the journey, a subtle but huge change in the way I viewed the world. I funded the period with more yacht deliveries and driving ferries on the Derwent River.
In 2006 Al and I headed to France to deliver Helsal 4 to Hobart via the Panama Canal. (See ‘A Tale of Two Oceans’) Following this, The Australian Maritime College beckoned again and I re-sat the Master 4 ticket I’d done back in the 80’s, then did a few hard yards, carting cattle and crackers (dynamite) across Bass Strait on a Bass Strait barge called the Mathew Flinders. Around the same time I very luckily managed to hook up with Vic, another of that rare breed of woman that was too good for me, but one I decided I was definitely going to hang on to.
As the cow shit on the Mathew Flinders piled up around my ankles along with the unwashed dishes in the galley sink and the Bass Strait gales blew on relentlessly, I figured there must be a better way to make a buck at sea.
Enter Jeremy Williams. Jeremy ran a budding young vessel/manning company out of Point Samson in far North Western Australia, servicing the iron ore construction industry. He started getting regular phone calls from me pestering him for a job. During one such discussion he lamented that in all probability I wasn’t going to stop annoying him until he took me on. I just smiled and agreed and he gracefully succumbed. I hopped on the next plane out of Hobart and flew straight into the mining industry, where I still am today.
Over the past forty odd years since I first left home (something I did a number of times) I’ve enjoyed many roles in many arenas. At various times I could be found working on Standards Australia committees, entering into hard fisted negotiations with politicians or bankers, or sailing the world’s oceans. I’ve been rich and poor a few times and I’ve witnessed, suffered and enjoyed a hugely fascinating and varied life. I hope you find some of the stories in this blog half as entertaining as their creation has been.
