2. The Goodbye

About 6 hours after we watch Leights and Kitty drive off into the rest of their lives, I said goodbye to our matrics for 2006. They ran their final Senior Youth and did an awesome job. I love them, and they are my friends, as much as a 12 year age gap will allow. It was hard for me to say goodbye to the end of an era, and as if to punctuate the moment, we had a fierce, but short, summer thunder storm.

Rain pelted down on the hot cement just after dusk and in a matter of seconds, that beautiful smell of hissing rain topped off the most emotional time of my year. At the end of Novemember I always say goodbye. But this time the summer rain took me back to 1996 when I said goodbye to my first ever biblstudy, as the grade 9's moved up to Senior High back at Christ Church. It rained then too, same sound, same smell, and although it reminded me of sad goodbyes, it also was kind of poetic.

(plus Andy baby)

(plus Nadine, Lisa, Lucy)

Part 1: The Wedding

I've had a real emotional weekend - all good, emotional neverthteless.

Part 1: The Wedding

Leights and Kitty - you guys are beautifully awesome and rejoicing just bubbles over when I think of Saturday. For those of you who weren't there - here are some of the moments. As we look at these shots, you are living it up on honeymoon. You need to know that we are all desperately jealous!





Sherbit!

Scott

PS: If lights is my brother in law - then kirsty and I are . . . . [a little help?!]

Steve sent me an underwater shot of our shark dive (see a few post back). It's taken with one of those disposable jobbies in a plastic case.
I love this photo, it's eerie, spooky and kind of scary. It looks like a great shot from a shark horror movie (not the clean cut type of flicks like Deep Blue Sea).
For instance; Is that blood on the sharks lips? Is that a piece of person on the end of the rope?
(The answer is no and no of course) but can you see where I'm coming from?!
Thanks steve

Scott

Stuff you didn't know Part 3

Cook had returned to Hawaii but this time he wasn't treated like god, he was recieved as one would welcome back a pet who wasn't house trainned. The locals began some serious theft and Cook, determined to keep the upper hand, went ashore to hold the chief to ransom until all the property had been returned. This tactic had worked well on other pacific islands, but this time didn't work out quite as he had hoped. They were chased back to the beach by an angry mob. The best way to hear the end of the story is to listen to it thru the journals of the men who were there (as described by Tony Horwitz).

"Phillips had lost sight of Cook, but the men aboard the launch saw the captain standing with his arm outstretched, apparently beckoning for the boats to come closer. But the launches commander either misunderstood the gesture or chose to ignore it, and ordered his men to row farther out.

Cook struggled to the shoreline: a ledge of lava, covered in shallow water. He was about 10 yards from the saftey of the other launch, if only he could swim (which he couldn't).

'Captain Cook was now the only man on the rock,' Samwell wrote. The captain stepped out into shallow water, one hand sheilding the back of his head from stones, the other clutching his musket. The Hawaiians seemed hesitant to pursue him.

"An indian came running behind him, stopping once or twice as he advanced, as if he was afraid, "Samwell wrote, "then taking Cook unaware he sprung to him, and then knocked him on the back of his head with a large club."

Cook staggered, fell to one knee, tried to rise. Another man rushed up and stabbed the captain between the shoulder blades with an iron dagger. Cook toppled into knee deep water and the crowd fell on him with a frenzied group assult.

"They now kept him underwater, one man sat on his shoulders and beat his head with a stone while others beat him with clubs and stones, Samwell wrote. Then they hauled Cooks body onto the rocks and continued the stabbings and beatings. "As soon as one had stabbed him another would take the instrument out of his body and give him another stab."

Captain Cook died on the lava shelf just after 8am.

Seaman Gilbert wrote; "All our hopes centered on him, our loss become irrepairable." Samwell added that the men returned to the boats, "crying out with tears in their eyes that they had lost their father."

This stuff makes me all emotional.
If you're an Australian this is compulsory reading, if your not, you'll wish you were.

Scott

Stuff you didn't know about Cook - Part 2

In some ways, Australia is lucky that it doesn’t belong to the Dutch or the French.

Captain Cook claiming it for the King of England was almost a complete fluke.

He and his crew had just finished some astronomical measurements in the Pacific and had decided it was about time to head home. Rather than taking the most direct route, Cook decided to cut across previously uncharted southern waters. This passage home was kind of out of obligation because, once at sea, he had opened sealed papers which ordered him to also try and discover the mysterious southern continent.

(Up until this point, the great south land had not recieved a great rap. The Dutch had bumped into the coast of Australia in the 16th cent. but passed quickly on commenting; “We could not find one fruitful tree or anything that could be of use to mankind.” William Dampier, an English privateer who visited the northwest of Australia in 1688 also added, “The inhabitants of this country are the most miserable people in the world.”)

Nevertheless, Cook’s probing loop brought him right into the Eastern coast of Australia, which he followed and charted all the way up to the tip of far north Queensland. He wasn’t looking for Australia; he just wanted to get home. If he had been a less adventurous soul, it would have been left up to someone else to bump into the great south land. But as it turns out he charted most of the East coast and as a result gave the big boys back home an ‘out of sight – out of mind’ option for the relocatation of it’s overcrowded prisons 7 years later.

So why has Cook been greeted with the excitement that meets a dry piece of toast?

Tony Horwitz (the author) reckons it’s because Cook wasn’t bad enough,

“Ned Kelly was eventually hanged, the Eureka Stockade fell after a 15 min battle, and the ‘jolly swagman’ drowned himself. But Australians love losers, so long as they lose with panache against overwhelming odds, or as martyrs to British authority. The true national holiday wasn’t Australia Day; it was Anzac Day, commemorating the doomed, British ordered assault by Australian troops at Gallipoli in 19156. James cook – a winner, faithful servant of his majesty, a wigged pom without much flair or humour – had little hope of entering Australia’s pantheon of antiheroes”. P148

One more Cook insight to go - his brutal death and dismemberment in Hawaii.

Scott

Things you didn't know Part 1

James Cooper is a good man. He always remembers stuff and even sends me a birthday pressie all the way over to deepest darkest Africa. He recently sent me a biography of another great man who shares his initals - Captin James Cook.

If you are an Australian, you know Cook was an Englishman who sailed into Botany Bay in 1788 and claimed the place for the British. Seven years later, they started shipping the convicts our way. He was the compulsory start for year 7 history and let's be honest, it was about as inspiring as school assembly.

If you're not an Austrlaian, you would be lucky to even know this much.

But friends; we have been mislead! Misinformed! This book is great, and Captin James Cook is a pretty amazing guy. In honour of the man (and as a thanks to Jimmy Cooper) I'm going to pop up a fact or two about Cook over the next week or so. Do yourself a favour and pop in.

Stuff about Captin Cook you Didn't Know Part 1:
James Cook charted and named more of the world than any other navigator in history!

Over his 3 journeys of discovery, Cook sailed from the Antarctic to the Arctic, from Tasmania to Soth America, from North America to Siberia and the Pacific Islands.

All in all he clocked up 200,000 miles, roughly equivilent to circling the equator 8 times or travelling from the earth to the moon.

If it wasn't for the fact that he saved me from growing up in a dreary mining town in England, you wouldn't say that Cook sticking the Union Jack in the sand at Botany Bay even rates that high on his list of all time acheivements.

But stay tuned . . . there's more

Scott