Author: Ning Xue

11/07/2020

We started the beautiful day by listening to PBS radio program ‘Jazz on Saturday’ in the morning. Breakfast is toast with scrambled eggs.

I asked J if he still want some fish tonight. He nodded hard, so I started working again. Since I am more skilful at catching yellowtail scads, two fish were caught in five minutes. Now that dinner is solved, today’s work is done! This kind of fish likes to stay near boats, probably because seabirds wouldn’t come closer. Most people catch this kind of fish for bait to get bigger fish. We are not that greedy (in fact, we can’t catch big ones), we just cook them for meals.

After that J taught me how to make brummel splice. It is to make a loop at the end of a rope, and then hide the excess rope back. This splice gets stronger when get pulled hard. It is very useful. After learning, I took another step closer to the Nawashi(rope master).

When the tide began to go out the afternoon, we took a motor dinghy to go ashore. We summited ‘Mount’ Wyndham – only 175m. On the way, we saw a non-venomous little yellow tree snake basking in the sun. If I didn’t stop J in time, he might step on it. According to some boat mates, there are no snakes on the island. You can’t never be too careful

We had fish curry laksa again for tea, because it was so good last night. And we had two fish instead of one. After the big meal, I felt up to pussy’s bow.

10/07/2020

Another easy day. I started painting in the morning and forgot to make lunch till afternoon.

Had a good afternoon nap and did some research on Virginia Woolf’s life. I wanted to know what kind of life did a woman who wrote such beautiful words live. The facts made me sad. Although she was born in an well to do family, she experienced sexual abuses from her stepbrothers. Her parents died when she’s still quite young. She suffered from depression since then. At 59, she filled her pockets with stones and jumped into the river and died…. The lighthouse enlightened her readers but failed to lead her to move on.

At sunset, I caught another yellowtail scad, made a pot of delicious fish curry laksa, and my cooking skills finally became stable again.

09/07/2020

Since arriving at Great Keppel Island, we haven’t been off the boat yet, just sheltered from the wind for several days. After lunch, the wind was weaker and we went to the island to experience the famous walking track here. Landing on Second Beach, there is a sailors Christmas tree, covered with colourful lifebuoys and floating things.

Walking around a rocky corner, we entered the bush and started tracking towards high point. There are A few green plastic chairs on the side is the track, always in pair. And you will find guiding stones on the ground, some with poems, some with sayings, and there is one with ‘Godot’s bus stop’ written on it. Just when we were lookIng at the blue butterflies at the stop, ‘Godot’ did came! A guy driving an off-road battery cars with bags of supplies passing through the path and stopped to greet us and talk about butterflies.” It’s funny that we walked in the bush for hours but hadn’t met anyone at all, and we met ‘Godot‘ in the ‘bus’ at this “bus stop”.

It‘s getting late so we went back to the boat.

At sunset, I caught a yellowtail scad again, which was similar to what I caught last night. It was a mystery how I caught the fish last night, because the hook is not in the mouth, but in the forehead of the fish. looks like it crashed into the hook… Steamed double fish with soy sauce, ginger and spring onion tonight. It says steam eight minutes on high heat, the result is a bit overdone, will try five minutes next time. (My friend told me later the best way is steam for 6mins and turn off heat but still cover with lid for 30 seconds.)