Daybreak Port Douglas
The Friday before last I received a totally random phone call from the photographer who did the photo shoot for my website back in January this year. He wanted to know if I would be interested in doing a television commercial for one of the major airlines. “Hmmm… this was a first!” Casting was the following morning at 10 and I had other plans. But in the spirit of my recent pledge to say yes to my Universe… I changed them… and agreed to at least go along to the casting.
Long story short… I left not expecting a call… and thought little of it again as I am already more than busy keeping up with my life as it is. But as fate would conspire to have it [yep you guessed it] the call came to tell me to be ready and waiting at the designated spot at the ungodly hour of 3.30 am the following Thursday morning for the transfer by bus and boat to the location for the 12 hour shoot.
Bus AND boat? “You’ve got to be kidding me”
Low Isle – Great Barrier Reef
By now major regret had set in and I consulted a couple of good and patient friends by email who were able to knock me seriously back into shape. I then packed the beach bag bathers hat and sunscreen and very early next morning jumped in the car and did the standing quarter mile to the rendezvous point for the bus. I had left a little later than planned and was grateful [at that hour] for the empty roads and the lack of a police presence to get me there in time for the bus. Ohhhh… but I do so love to drive fast!
The bus trip was uneventful except to say that I just happened to randomly sit next to the sister-in-law of a girl [from Melbourne] whom I had worked along side [and got to know well] at last month’s MusoMagic Workshop in Townsville. I wrote about the workshop recently under Standing on the Edge. The chances of us being on the same assignment.. my choosing that particular seat… or how/why we happened to be talking about it in the first place at that ungodly hour of the morning while everyone else was asleep… seemed incredible to us both.
It occurred to me then that there was more to this adventure than initially met the eye.
A wet start onboard Shaolin
At the Port Douglas Marina we boarded the Shaolin [a replica Chinese Junk] for the 2 hour transfer to offshore Low Isle. The island is deserted except for a caretakers cottage and an unmanned lighthouse. There were a few rudimentary palm frond shelters along the beach… but not all that much shade from the sun.
Leaving Shaolin
It was an odd choice of location I thought… and the shoot would have been way easier to manage back on the mainland… but where on earth would have been the adventure in that?
After a wet and windy voyage… the Shaolin dropped anchor just offshore from the island and in a major display of unparalleled efficiency… cast crew and equipment [the full catastrophe] were ferried across by dinghy to the beach where filming began in earnest.
The full catastrophe
Fortunately or [unfortunately]… it rained lightly on and off all day which kept the beach either humid and wet… or humid and downright hot. But at least we weren’t in full sun. Either way it was humid… and some of us seriously needed a hair straightener by about mid morning but without 240v mains power we soon realised we were not going to have our curls coiffed any time soon.
Ohh shoot…
So it was back to bare basics… singlets sarongs and barefeet… hair wild and windswept as we were filmed strolling up and down the beach… gazing out to sea from under a colorful umbrella… and being interviewed pretending to have just stepped excitedly off an imaginary flight from Bali with a total stranger we had only just met. It sounds easy. Let me tell you it’s not!
Lovely light on Low Isle
But it was a lot of fun.
and a lot of hard work… Grin.
And I met and spoke with a lot of different people about a lot of interesting things.
Debbie & Jeannie [sitting around on a coconut]
I met a woman with a profound fear of water… who would never have taken the assignment had she known she would have to be surrounded by so much of it. Once there and confronted with the situation… she realised it was meant to be. [Incidental to the day those present were privileged to witness her metamorphosis through fear toward empowered sea mariner!] I got talking to her and learned she was an artist, actor, costumier, healer and counsellor who had an active interest in the field of Emotional Freedom Technique which is something I have been studying. I wrote about it recently here under Blocks Blanks and Barriers.
Back at Four Mile Beach Port Douglas
I also met a great couple [I had not known before] and spoke at length with them on the boat coming back. I casually mentioned that I had been out at Ellis Beach the previous Sunday setting up to paint and taking photographs and how windy it had been. I wrote about it here The Bright Side.
She shot me an astonished look and said
“Hey… I think we saw you! We were driving back from Port Douglas and saw you setting up your easel and thought… how nice… someone’s painting on the beach!”
Almost too much serendipity for one day! (((chuckles)))
a couple of roasted almonds on the way home
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Jean, you are branching (boating) out in all directions! Go, Girl!
I know… “try anything once” is my new motto! LOL But you never know where else it might lead. What you might learn. So it was a good thing to do. Even learned a bit more about Garage Band from the Danish sound technician [who dabbles with composing music in his spare time] Nothing is EVER for nothing. It was an interesting learning curve.
Thanks for the encouragement Nita!
Wow, Jean, what a lot of cosmic energy focused in one spot for you. Great adventure! Having lived on boats for over ten years, first a 42 foot sport fisherman and then a 45 foot ketch, loving every second of it, I drooled at the thought of your day on or near the water. My best times were when I dropped the lines and headed offshore. It was always amazing to me to get a mile or so away from land and look back at the L.A. sprawl, knowing that on their side of the shoreline there were millions of people and on mine perhaps a couple of dozen.
Yes John… I could easily imagine that. Flying into LA you get a sense of the vastness of the place. There are almost as many people living in the LA Metropolitan area as there are living on the entire Australian continent. So getting out to sea and away from it all would seem like the ideal escape. Where did you sail to? I know Catalina is off there somewhere but are there other islands you can get to as well from there?
Here… there are a myriad of small [and large] islands dotted right along the Great Barrier Reef from the tropic of Capricorn north. It’s something I guess we take for granted but when you do get out there you remember how incredibly beautiful it all is… and how lucky we all are to be here on this planet Earth.
I’m a bit of a landlubber I’m afraid but would love to spend more time out there. In fact it has been a bit of a pipe dream of mine to sail from here out to Western Samoa to check out Robert Louis Stevenson’s haunt there. I have always felt a close kinship to the man for some reason and would love to walk up the hill to his epitaph to get an inside glimpse of the place he loved so much.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Ah, Jean, how did you know? The “Home is the sailor” quote is one of my favorite all-time pieces of poetry! Catalina is a day’s sail out of Marina del Rey, and one I’ve done often. On the back side of the island is Cat Harbor, a magical place where wild goats roam the hillsides. It’s fun to take the dinghy to shore and walk the short way to the Isthmus on the other side, passing grazing buffaloes on the way. Further offshore there’s the tiny Santa Barbara island, where one anchors on the lee shore and hopes the winds don’t shift during the night. It’s a state nature reserve, and one can hear the sea lions barking all night. To the west there are the Channel Islands, with wonderful coves to explore – and no inhabitants. Or one can sail south to Baja.
I have never lived on a boat,Michigan has winters you know, but I owned two a Cal 25 and a Cal 27. Both were built before the strengths of fiberglass was known and were much more solid than contemporary boats. My wife and I sailed Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair and Lake Huron in the summers and chartered in the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas in the winter. My two favorite cruising grounds were the North channel of Lake Huron and the BVI small islands many many harbors. I remember the long long sunsets of the north channel sitting in the cockpit with a north Channel cocktail crushed freshly picked blueberries and rum.
Sounds magical John
Do you miss sailing? I think I would if I had marvellous places like these to discover. I have a real soft spot for Robert Louis Stevenson which probably dates back to seeing a lock of his hair and his pipe (not to mention the missing verse from his poem My Shadow written up in a journal in his own hand) at the tiny weeny Robert Louis Stevenson museum downstairs on the Queens Mile in Edinburgh. I admire his courage to live life with his compass pointing to [his creative] true north.
Roger… you have winters there in Michigan??? Nahhh don’t believe it! Grin. You and Eileen must have made some wonderful memories cruising to all those exotic locations. Sunsets are special no matter where on the planet we are… some more so than others depending on who we are sharing them with I guess. I like the sound of that North Channel cocktail esp the freshly picked blueberries! I can picture it now…
I do miss sailing, Jean. A lot of the most magical and thrilling times of my life have been on the water, too numerous to list and impossible to even make a short list of the best. It’s true there’s an old saying that the two happiest days in a yachtsman’s life are the day he buys his boat and the day he sells it. There’s also the definition of a yacht: a hole in the water you dump money into. But I got my money’s worth, and knew when the time had come to move on, but I do still get the itch to cast off lines and sail away.
On another note, your calendar arrived yesterday, exactly to the day I was told to expect it by redbubble.com, and it’s beautiful. Thank-you so much! I’ve always loved your work online, and it’s even better enlarged. It’s funny, I looked at the thumbnails on the back and was struck by the idea that if you ever had the urge you could do a beautiful “comic” book or graphic novel; the style and wonderful color would lend itself. Thank-you again! (I was going to back-channel my thanks, but I wanted everyone who visits your site and stumbles upon my comment to see it.)
Thanks John… I really appreciate that
How wonderful that the sea has figured so hugely in your life… and your sailing it in particular… seems so whimsical to me.
I’m so pleased the Calendar finally got there… and you will have it for the beginning of the new year. It’s kind of cool to know ‘those little guys’ will see out 2010 on a wall at your place so many miles across the sea. I had been working on a series of children’s books [with characters and story line all worked up] and I know we talked before about graphic novels but this past year I kind of lost direction. I guess it’s all part of the process of discovering the best way forward… and trying different things to see what works… but in the new year I am hopeful I will regain my heading with a sure and steady compass to steer toward the future. It feels so good to at last be out there at the helm with the breeze in my face… LOL
The calendar arrived and will hang in my studio. I agree with John that your style is well suited to graphic novels. Keep working and in the words of Satchel Paige” Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.”
The story of my life Roger. Glad the calendar arrived