The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

26 January 1788 Several wooden ships with tall masts and big white sails sail into a huge river mouth, surrounded by rolling hills on all sides. They drop their anchors, and, before long, a row boat is lowered over one side, a whole heap of people get in, and they start rowing to the shore. On the water all around them there are dozens of canoes with people in them who are fishing and doing various things. Smoke is curling off the canoes, which have small fires burning in them, and the people are using traps and nets and spears. At the sight of the big ships they turn away and head towards shore. In the wooden row boat heading towards the shore there’s a strange collection of people. Some are barely covered in rags, and they are bent over the oars and are pulling the boat closer to land. Others are dressed in bright red coats, and they are holding muskets, not doing anything else. In the front of the boat is a bloke, standing up, one foot in the bottom of the boat, the

The wind had been howling northerly for weeks and weeks on end. It seemed like it would never stop, and we were growing desperate. It had started blowing more or less on cue towards the end of September, the end of our dry season here, and had launched itself with gusto into The Northerly Season. We knew that for the next three months or so the prevailing wind would be from the north, it’s the weather pattern here in our country. It usually starts to back off around mid-December or so, when the warm season starts, what other people elsewhere might refer to as Summer. The Northerly Season is more or less contiguous with The Build Up in my home of the Northern Territory, that time when the humidity in the air rises to 200 %, visitors from down south take off towards Antarctica with burning rubber and boot wide open, often accidentally forgetting their wives and kids on the footpath besides them, we eat mangoes five times a day, and divorces, murders and suicides increase dramatically an

New Year’s day came around, and of course there was only one way to see the new year in. Various members of the crew gathered in the dark on the beach. When I got there at 4.30 The Shredder, Deluded Devotee Of The Useless Shortboard, was already there, thoughtfully studying the ocean in front of us. Within seconds we were joined by The Snake Catcher, Scourge Of All Illicit And Un-Authorised Wave-Snatching,   Snaking And Dropping In. In the darkness we congregated, congratulated and contemplated the movement of the water in front of us, and democratically agreed that we couldn’t see the square root of fuck-all. So I myself, The Baboon, Expert Of The Arse Pointing Uselessly Skywards On The Surfboard, climbed the steps up to the look-out that sits on top of a rock at the water‘s edge. I faced into the wind blowing from the north, not usually a good sign for surf conditions here on our beach, and I stuck my bagpipes under my arm. Blew a goodly amount of air into them, punched them gently