On my second to last weekend in Australia I went on a good ole fishin weekend. Glenn and I took the train up to Woy Woy while Simon and Glenn drove up with the supplies and checked into the holiday house. Chris joined us the next day. Patonga is a small fishing hamlet somewhere between Palm Beach and Brooklyn I think. Rumour has it that it's also in swimming distance of the third Japanese midget sub and the beach from Home & Away.
Some of you may know about the third Japanese midget sub blog entry cliff hanger that I never finished. It was my first and last blog cliff hanger. No one showed any interest, and you can't blame every Tom, Dick and Harry that winds up reading my blog after searching for "Thylacine food chain", "Cannibal goldfish" or "Glenn Hinton". Those were the search criteria for Tom, Dick and Harry, respectively.
Back to the fishing weekend: we are men! And we were eating meat! So, on Friday night we ate a massive meal of steaks cut about four inches thick and barely cooked, along with a beautiful salad and the most exquisite vinaigrette. With that, and a few beers in our bellies, we made our way down to the creek to a private wharf to fish off of. The good news is that no one fell in the water. The bad news is that we didn't catch a thing. In hindsight, here the good news far outweighs the bad news, since we often fell in the water later in the weekend and we never caught a thing.
Saturday sunlight offered some great opportunity to not catch any fish. After a massive breakfast of meat and embryos, we set off to "the point". This is one of the best places in Patonga to not catch any fish. It's world-renowned. Chris pulled in the first life form: a baby flounder. The poor thing still had a diaper on. He threw it back. And so the theme was set for the weekend: whatever we caught we had to throw back because it was too small. Whiting, tailor or flounder, that's it. And nearly a blue swimmer crab. I lured on in close to shore and Glenn dove in the water for it, but no luck.
Soon we were distracted by making sand castles and a golden retriever. My friends started to play fetch with the dog using my thongs. I paid $7 for these thongs two years ago, and they have covered a lot of Australia. As the retrieved thrashed my thongs side to side as he came ashore, I thought this would be the end. Nope! My thongs live on!
No fish. But we ate. Oh, how we ate. Lunch on Saturday consisted of the biggest burgers I have ever seen - two each (again, no fish). We worked off the meal with some kayak jousting. I won, Glenn lost. We got into some more unproductive fishing and bush turkey herding. Sorry, that sentence is misleading: the fishing was unproductive, the bush turkey herding was very productive. We also managed to get some more extreme bocce in after lunch. While no one split his head open, like last time, Simon provided a few comical close calls:
1. A toss went back over his head and landed on the roof of the house.
2. A toss was about to land on the concrete path, so he ran out to catch it.
In both instances the pip was a good 10 meters (30 feet) in front of him, and the ball was tossed about the same height, as required by extreme bocce rules. With the last bit of light on Saturday we found another wharf to sit on with fishing rods. Not a single bite, but it sure was beautiful.
Unfortunately, on Saturday night we found ourselves fully ingrained in Patonga street culture: Shock Treatment and Crazy Eights. Visitors to Patonga should keep in mind that the The Tonga wields great power over humans. The Great Shock Game rendered us all helpless for quite some time.
"What is this peculiar game enjoyed by the natives?" you ask.
"It's a battery-operated plastic toy, introduced to the area by Chris, in which four people each hold a handle with a button on top. The oracle plays music and flashes red. When the music stops and the red light turns green, each person has to push the button. The last to do so is delivered an electric shock," I reply.
We quickly switched to "extreme mode" which meant that only the first person who pushed the button was not shocked, the three others were. Then we moved into "double extreme mode" which meant that two people played, with a shocker in each hand... so both people would be shocked, but one person would only be shocked in one hand. Yes, we are men, and we are idiots!
Dinner consisted of a half a lamb each. The night continued... Simon and Glenn, the chief wranglers, managed to trap a small dog in our yard as well. The dog seemed surprised when the gate was closed behind him, but we soon let him go enjoy other yards. The owners of the house also left a full wardrobe for us to try on. That was fun.
More on the house... the house had three separate bedrooms: a master bedroom, a room with a queen and bunk-beds and a room with a single a crib. There was also a separate small building with a bathroom, mini-kitchen and queen bed. Glenn Mason took the master bedroom, Glenn Hinton and Chris took the room with the bunk-beds, I took the separate building and Simon took the room with the crib, naturally. The back of the house was just off the creek and popular with fellow-vacationers and dog-walkers. The kitchen included 10 different forks.
Sunday was a day for more bush turkey herding, as well as kookaburra feeding and laying around in the grass. We did fish and joust in the kayaks, too, of course. And Shock Treatment was enjoyed over a coffee. Finally, we cleaned the place, hit the fish and chip for a taste of what we didn't catch, and head on back to the city.
I do have to mention the incredible variety of birds we saw at Patonga: sea eagles, kookaburras, bush turkeys, galahs, cockatoos, lorikeets, currawongs, magpies, rosellas, and a bird that sounded like an elk screaming, according to Chris.
But no fish.
...and plenty of photos here
We move out of our apartment this morning, so it was perfect timing for our washing machine to blow up. The full load of laundry had to be transferred to the tub for drip-drying before bringing them to Jen & Ben's. Good fun!
