“Too right! We’ll tow you over to your moorings.”
“Okay!” It was wonderful to turn over decisions to someone else, someone who knew his way around.
“We’ve been saving a spot for you, right off the clubhouse in Rushcutter’s Bay. We only just heard you’d arrived—sorry if you’ve been kept waiting. And, by the way—we have a couple of gentlemen from the press who asked to come along. All right if they come aboard?”
“Sure—come ahead! Boys, throw them a line!” And the fun began.
8 —AND BACK UP:
THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
“Better men than we had come to grief....”
Sydney, like most cities, is big, bustling, and impersonal, but it has its own atmosphere and flair. The hills, covered with typically red-roofed houses; the extensive harbor, with its multitude of bays and sheltered coves, dominated by the magnificent arching bridge that is Sydney’s pride; the breezy friendliness of the people—all these give Sydney a unique character.
Our own location, in quiet Rushcutter’s Bay, less than fifteen minutes by bus from the heart of the city, was as lovely a spot as one could hope to find in or near a metropolis. Through the kindness of Mr. Packer, editor of the Sydney Telegraph, whom we had met first in Honolulu, a company car was put at our disposal during our entire stay but, due to the trauma of driving on the left—and a vague fear of getting involved in some accident that could wipe out our entire savings—we depended mostly for transportation upon the scarlet double-decker buses that moved majestically through the streets.
One of the disappointing realities of travel is the impossibility of ever seeing as much of any country as one had hoped to do, and Australia was no exception. We had come armed with addresses: friends who had worked with me at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan; the Japanese wives of Australian servicemen whom Barbara had taught in Kure. All of them had said, cheerfully, when we parted: “See you when you get to Australia!” But now we discovered how widely scattered these friends were and how impossible to see them all. A few of the Japanese brides lived in or near Sydney, and through them Barbara was able to get news of many more, but the two friends Jessica had most looked forward to seeing lived near Melbourne and we had no time to sail farther south.
At last it was decided that Barbara and Jessica would travel overland to Melbourne for a short holiday from boatkeeping. Barbara stayed only a few days, long enough to fall completely under the spell of the city, which was in a fever of preparation for the Olympic Games, but Jessica was so delighted to be with Carol Exton, whom she had known when we first went out to Japan, and Clare Davis, the pen pal whose father we had first met in Tahiti, that we didn’t have the heart to tear her away while both families were urging extended hospitality. As a result, Jessica stayed on for the better part of two weeks in the army town of Puckapunyal and went with Carol to the dependent school, where she learned to figure in pounds, shillings, and pence. Then she switched families for a visit with Clare in Melbourne. By the time she rejoined us she was talking like a “proper Aussie,” throwing around such expressions as “beaut,” “terribly posh,” “it’s a dill” (meaning no good or stupid), or “let’s have a gig”—in Yankee talk, “let me see.” In addition, she had persuaded the Davises to let Clare sail with us up to the Great Barrier Reef—and now all she had to do was convince the Skipper that we needed a subdeb hitchhiker for a change. Since Clare’s parents were quite willing to pay for her to return by air from one of the northern Queensland ports before we set off for Indonesia, I was more than willing. One of the inevitable drawbacks to such a trip as ours is the lack of companionship for those who are under age. Ted and Jessica got along far better than most brothers and sisters with a five-year gap in their ages—but the gap was there. And although Barbara had found an amazing number of interests, confidences, and giggles that she and Jessica could share, we knew that even the best mother-daughter relationship is no substitute for an intimate of one’s own age.