Captain's Log.

More than once I've been accused of being a 'Pincher.' Like a bloody common criminal, I felt. I stole the wind? How does that work?  Wind pinching is a sailing term. There is no robbery, no real crime afoot. It just means I'm sailing a yacht way too close to the breeze. One degree more into it and the boat would stall. Stalling is not ideal. A sailing boat relies on the wind for forward movement so its captain can control it's behaviour through the water. It's called navigating. A stalled boat is uncontrollable, vulnerable, unnavigatible. It's better to turn away from the wind to maintain power and control of the boat. Craig got me into sailing years ago. I took to it right away. The first thing he noticed was my ability to read the wind and find the highest windward angle for his boat. I remember that day well. We took his Hartley 16 out onto Moreton Bay and headed out to Peel Island on a single tack. That one 'tack' thing

Chances are, Peter Elvison means nothing to you. He's nobody because the Internet is a large place. It's impossible to know everyone at once, living or dead. But there are some out there who'll do an Internet search in the not-to-distant future and type in the words Peter Elvison - to find out more about who the Mandurah man was. Perhaps you didn't know he was sick, he'd passed without anyone telling you or maybe you're sad you didn't make it to his funeral.  Perhaps you did attend but look for answers to questions you're unable to ask Peter. Things go like that. Life passes us by too fast. We miss stuff and feel annoyed. And in that vain, I'm providing my own memorial here on the Internet. It probably won't answer all your questions or alleviate every hurt but perhaps the mark I leave on this blog will give you some kind of peace.    Peter was my close friend. He died last week and we celebrated his life yesterday. (

Every gardener in each state of Australia adopts a common plant for their home gardens, something that thrives with little attention or effort. Brisbane's Signature Tree 2 'Poinciana' Brisbane's Signature Tree 1 'Jacaranda' In my old state of Queensland, Poinciana, Jacaranda trees (see above) and Bougainvillea dot the suburbs. That's okay for Queensland and the east coast of Australia  but what about the other states? What about one I moved to recently? Much of Western Australia is on a similar latitude (at least Brisbane / Perth are) and I expected to see similar vegetation when I moved across. This was not the case.  In Western Australia (Perth to Mandurah) there's a different plant duo that dominates yards, car parks, commercial precincts and such. It's Rosemary and Lavender ! I suspect it comes down to soil. The west doesn't have any! Much of the west coast (metro areas) is covered in sand. There's no nutritiona

Sometimes I just have to laugh at irony's effect on human life. There's nothing else left to do but smile. Golden Bay Western Australia is a picture postcard place. It's a stretch of around 15kms of sapphire blue ocean meeting rolling dunes. It's natural and untouched. No one in Golden Bay wants to see the dunes flattened by a new developer's plans to put a couple of thousand houses on it. Once that happens, the postcard look will be gone. The irony is that most of the placards placed around the Golden Bay area are on properties built in Golden Bay 20-40 years ago. These homes were taking bites out of the dunes long before someone got offended by it. Animals are today's bargaining item. Mass destruction means mass execution - a matter that leans on greater losses over shorter times. Forget that animals were lost when their homes, roads, highways, power, sewage went in. Death and destruction is totally different now. Irony continues as t

Just looking for an address in Raby Bay, Cleveland for which to focus my next murder story. And I think I've found one! It needed to be on the water - a canal estate. It had to have good water access to Moreton Bay. It needed a berth large enough in which to moor one motherstuffin' sized catamaran. Now I need to write me a hot lady skipper to captain this yacht. She needs to be a doctor and has the credentials to perform surgery on the boat. She'll be a stunning woman, a fertility specialist with an exemplary record of  turning childless couples into parents... but she also has a dark secret. That's all for now. Stay tuned - M

Deaths at music festivals are on the increase. It's sad but this week another innocent teen died at the hands of an accidental overdose. It's occurred three times in the last month. Now's there's a debate about testing the drugs distributed at musical festivals. If you read the tweets and listen to the traditional media on this topic, it'll have us believing the general consensus is that pill testing should take place at every musical festival - to find out what's exactly inside the concoctions that are illegally dispensed to young Aussies before they swallow and then become victims. What has happened to this world? Why are we at the point of debating of testing pills? When I was younger, I was taught not to put foreign things into my body. Don't do it. The message was clear. The extension to that was 'Don't accept anything from strangers.' It was so simple. DON'T DO IT. Each of us are responsible for OUR own mistakes, not s

Moreton Bay brings many sights and sounds to the eyes and ears of a sailor. During my time on the olive green liquid in the middle bay I saw turtles, dugong, dolphins and such on a regular basis. I have fond memories of everything I did on the water but the one thing that has stayed with me is a sound - the sound of dry, lonely wind wailing through a she-oak tree. She-oaks in Sandgate. They line the coast everywhere. In a light wind they softly pine. At night they whimper from the darkness. When you're alone and anchored near an island covered with them, they whisper their despair openly and endlessley. Only the sounds of cold water lapping on the hull accompany their tears, your tears, my tears. Setting sail out of Manly for the first time was scary. I'd never sailed before. I raised the sail and air quickly filled it, tipping the boat, making the water whoosh around one side of the hull. It lurched forward, leaning further and I thought the boat would tip over.