Dugong it!

I'm sorry. The photos fell out of my loot-from-the-web bag in the wrong order. Please start with the bottom one. It shows how Queensland is fraying at the edges. One particularly large tear in the hem has produced Moreton Bay which tucks in between Caloundra, Moreton Island and Stradbroke Islands (north and south). This allows one to say "we're poppin' over to Stradie this arvo, darlin'", if one wants to. It is a very beautiful stretch of water.

At Manly (the Brisbane 'burb and not the Sydney Beach) the Royal Brisbane Yacht Squadron (with its own motel) is home to an awful lot of money, most of it attracting more money by the simple strategem of constantly fraying its rigging, bumping its hull, bending its keel, breaking its mast and doing what yachts do when they aren't actually being sailed. One of these is Les and Janet's Farrier 22 folding trimaran. Huh? That's right. A 22' trimaran that folds up neatly so that you can fit it into your pocket. This particular specimen had done Proper Yacht Impressions by fraying its forward trampolines. The sailmaker's repair was competent but he had forgotten to thread and leave a mouse to assist us in threading the cable through. My thumbs are very sore this morning but I still have the glow of having been a RUSP (Really Useful Somebody Person), persevered when all others had abandoned hope (or interest) and Got the Job Done.

That meant that I fully deserved (a) to be fed ice cold Stella Artois at regular intervals during the day (b) snooze happily on a trampoline without Janet pouring cold water over me (c) experience the sheer joy of sunshine, wind and water and (d) ...

... well, (d) was special enough to deserve a paragraph of its own. A lot of the Bay is fairly shallow. So much so that it pops its bottom out into the sun at low tide, particularly at the Amity Sounds. We anchored there for lunch (which could and should be "(e) magnificent german rolls with ham, tomato, mustard and lettuce) just before low tide. I have a suspicion that I am going to need all the "Pacific ocean colours and textures" palette of words later this week so I won't tell you today just how beautiful and peaceful it can all be.

Until the orchestra drops into a minor key and there, in a pale patch of water, you notice three small triangles undulating and circling around the edge of a sand bank. Not big enough to be scared about but big enough to ... oh, look, there's a ray! ... oh yeah, we got a big turdle this soid I rikkon ... be unsettlingly unfamiliar. What has three fins that close together?

Janet is not a great one for supposition and theorising. She jumped into the water, which was now less than shin deep and set off to investigate, avoiding sea urchins, finding a star fish and getting up close to what was not, as someone had suggested, a wobbegong (now there's a word that needs a lot more exercise) but an eastern shovel nosed shark. While Janet walked on water behind that one, another swam under the boat. I didn't know they existed. I'm not entirely sure how or why they do but am very glad to know they, too, are God's Little Creatures.

But, we still haven't really got to (d) (you'll remember that I deserved "d" as reward for being a RUSP). We'd seen several dugong shaped shadows in the darker water where the sand banks shelved down. Now, we sailed into a pod of 3 or 4 just as the broke surface for Big Breafs. One was very close. We startled it. It broke out of slow-n-easy-does-it mode, switched on the "dive dive dive" siren, thumped its tail, splashed us and disappeared under water. Now, that was a very special moment.

We sailed back through fleets of racing keelers, dinghies, skiffs and even Oppies. I was neither jealous nor nostalgic - for more that 15 minutes at a time.

Then we had Chinese.

PS: Dugongs have particularly dense skeletons to stop them floating up from the sea bed where they graze on sea grass.

PPS: When Dora said, "Mr Williams, you are a bloody lucky man!" she was so bloody right.