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news
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Josie's
latest book Slow Coast Home is now out
in paperback: click here
to order a signed copy.
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Right-side-up update |
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If you're thinking this postcard doesn't much look like a kangaroo or a
cockatoo but more like the bike dreamed up by Mike Burrows, designed by
Lotus and ridden to victory by Chris Boardman in a bygone year, you're right.
And if you're wondering why I'm sending something of a Blighty flavour rather
than an Aussie one, that's because I'm here instead of there. After a year spent mostly upside down, returning home was all very sudden and all very unplanned. Had things gone as I thought they were going to, I should now be cycling around the wilds of Tasmania. But thanks to being charged at by a big brute of a dog, resulting in a twisted knee (yes, THAT knee!), damaged cartilage and multiple Melbourne hospital visits, x-rays and scans with a possible knee operation on the cards, I decided the best thing was to come home to write about New Zealand while getting mended properly rather than flop around in my tent feeling all woeful. So here I am hobbling around, one-legged cycling and determined to get another hundred thousand miles under my wheels before the wonked knee gives up the ghost for good. |
Postcards from Oz |
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G'day
mate! Have made it to Oz! But only just. The good news is that my German
freighter finally turned up. The bad news is that an hour after sliding
away into the murk from New Zealand's Port of Tauranga, we hit a Force 9
storm. All night and all day and all night again the ship slammed and fell
into the scary large potholes of the mountainous seas. My innards turned
inside out and upside down. Felt like a dead dog. The Filipino and Kiribati
crew were all very lovely and helpful though. They kept trying to get me
to drink green tea and eat hard boiled eggs and buns which was not easy
as sipping water even made me sick. Then, no sooner had I got back on my wobbly sea legs than we careered bow-first into a Force 10 nightmare with 50-plus knot winds and 10 metre (30-very-high-feet) waves. The captain looked not a happy man. Nor did anyone else for that matter. The ship bucked and slammed and jammed and jarred into the bottomless troughs and walls of waves and took on a worrying amount of water. All bilges going full pelt. Hit a massive electrical storm too. Sky exploded. Engine power was cut from 17½ — 20 knots to 6 knots. Just had to try and ride it out. Everything smashing. Everything crashing. Much later and into the clear, the captain told me that had the storm last much longer than the 20 or so hours that it did, we could have rolled, which would have been a bit more excitement than I'd bargained for. I had always wanted to cross the Tasman sea by ship, but I can't say I've ever been that keen that I've wanted to swim it. At last I landed on my feet in Melbourne, a stone lighter than I had been a week earlier. I can certainly recommend a sea-crossing of the Tasman as a very effective diet, if nothing else. |
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