Rottnest Island revisited.

Rottnest is a holiday island thirty kilometres west of the Fremantle. Lesley and I have been revisiting Rottnest Island for over forty years.

In late January this year, Lesley and I again enjoyed a wonderful week’s holiday on Rottnest. Before we had even met each other we had enjoyed holidays on Rottnest, but our first visit to the island as a family was in November, 1974, when we enjoyed a two-week holiday with daughters, Jane (5yrs) and Sarah (almost 3 years). Our youngest daughter, Emily was born in August, 1975. So, maybe she was with us at  Rottnest that November, too?

Breakfast in bed.  Sarah, Noel, Jane and Lesley. November 1974.

Waiting for the ferry. January 1977

At our "secret"cove near Catherine Beach. January 1976.

We are going home today. January 1976.

Armstrong Point January 1976

We did not go in January 1975 as our new born daughter, Emily, was only four months old. However, we went back in January 1976 and almost every summer since then we have been to Rottnest. Our daughters learned to ride their bikes there and loved Rottnest as much as we did. When they grew up Jane and Sarah both had jobs working in the restaurant and café on Rottnest.

When our daughters left home we started going to Rottnest with friends, where we partied hard and extensively. We had many memorable moments. If only we could remember them!

Geordie Bay.

Geordie Bay.

In the 2000s we started going to Rottnest with our daughters and their families. This January we went with Sarah and Denis and grandchildren, Sophie and Luc. Emily and Jack, Sari and Kai joined us a day or two later. Carl came over on his boat for the last three days, stopping on the way to catch a feed of delicious whiting. 

This year’s Rottnest holiday was a bit different. Also enjoying the comfortable holiday villas at Geordie Bay were eight couples whom Sarah and Emily had become friendly with as parents at the schools that all of their children attend. So our holiday group comprised of about twenty adults and fifteen children, ranging in age from two to 14 years. It was a lot of fun for everyone.  

At the end of each school year the senior graduating students all head off to various holiday places, including Rottnest Island, for a week of unbridled celebration of the end of their schooling. It is called Leavers Week and generally involves a fair bit of alcohol and very enthusiastic and often random intermingling of the sexes.

Jamie with the catch of the day. January 2016.

The old man and the cray. January 2016

Well our holiday was a bit like Leavers Week…without the random intermingling, of course. Three of the dads had boats, so each morning they went off to pull in their cray pots, usually bringing home large and delicious crayfish. Western Australian crayfish are like lobster but without the claws. They are sold on the international markets as Western Rock Lobster, but we West Aussies still call them crays, or crayfish. The sad part is that our crayfish are so popular in the US and China that we hardly get any to eat for ourselves. The Yanks and the Chinese pay top dollars for our crayfish so the fishermen do not have too many to sell to us locals. As a result the price goes up and up. At Christmas they were selling Western Rock Lobster at our local shopping centre for $99/kilogram. Needless to say we satisfied ourselves with prawns, scallops and big blue manna crabs.

Luc gives Captain Denis directions about how to get to Eagle Bay.

Denis with the kids. About to go snorkelling with seals at Eagle Bay. January 2016

Each morning on Rottnest, Lesley and I would go for a swim and a long walk and then come back for another swim with the rest of the folks and then lunch. In the meantime, the dads with boats would go out early in the morning to pull up their cray pots. After bringing in the crays the dads then ferried the children and their mums and dads to various bays and reefs. Everyone would swim, snorkel or frolic with a colony of seals at Eagle Bay, right near the west end of the island, or enjoy swimming or sunbathing in the beautiful waters of Porpoise Bay and Little Porpoise Bay just around the western point of Geordie Bay.

At Porpoise Bay. Some happy campers and their champers.

Of course there were occasional visits to the Rottnest Hotel, once the summer home of the Governors of Western Australia but now affectionately known as The Quokka Arms.

The Quokka Arms. Always a popular spot.

In the late afternoons, the dads would go down and play beach cricket with the children. Naturally they took an adequate supply of liquid refreshments with them. About half an hour later the mothers would roll up with their drinks of choice, champers or chardonnay.

Fielding practice for beach cricket. Everyone wants to field at DEEP mid on.

This conviviality continued through the pleasantly warm afternoons until the sun sank below bright pink, orange and purple clouds on the western horizon. It is very unusual for us coast dwelling West Australians, when we are at the beach, to see the sun setting behind land. It always sinks into the Indian Ocean, usually in a splendid blaze of glory. But Geordie Bay faces north and so the sun sets behind the low hills that make up the west end of Rottnest Island.

It was during one of these genial gathering, as we watched the twilight painting up the sky, that I remarked to Sarah that our group of about twenty adult beach drinkers looked a little bit like a Leavers Party. Of course we were much more well behaved and a lot quieter than twenty leavers would be at 6-30pm in the evening.

Fun in the afternoon. January 2016

Then it was time to go to our respective villas for tea, after which Lesley and I were content to stay home watching the Australian Tennis Open or Australia playing India in the cricket or some TV drama while the mums and dads partied into the night. There was too many of them to all comfortably fit into one villa so the fun of the evenings was usually enjoyed in two or more villas.  Their children played on the beach, or safely on the roads (there are no cars on Rottnest), rode their bikes, went to the Island’s picture theatre or just stayed around in groups talking.

Occasionally some of our grandchildren and their friends would drop by to see how we “oldies” were going. Although, I really think some of the grandies friends often came to see us in the hope that Lesley would provide them all with some lollies, which she always managed to do.

Less occasionally, Sarah or Emily or Denis and Carl would drop by the let us know where they had been, with what particular group of social activists and where they were going next.

Two of the ladies in the group are sisters and their parents, from Luton, England, have been holidaying with them in Perth since about August last year. This couple, Jimmy (born in Glasgow), and Norah (born in Country Clare, Ireland) were visiting Rottnest for the first time and were absolutely entranced by the place. There is a tour bus that goes around the island visiting various beautiful bays and landmarks. They both went around twice on the one ticket!

On one occasion during an afternoon gathering on the beach, Norah said to me, “Rottnest is such a wonderful place, especially for the children. And even though the island is packed with people you always find beautiful bays with hardly anybody there. It is a paradise. We are 45 minutes from Perth and a million miles away.”

She is right of, course. It is a wonderful place…and not just for children!

Jimmy and Norah O'Brien. Forty five minutes from Perth and a million miles away.

Yes, indeed. Rottnest is a place where you just lose yourself in the beauty and peacefulness of it all. It is my intention to write a travel article about Rottnest. I was going to use my time on the island to do some research. The trouble is that you soon get so lost enjoying the Rottnest Holiday experience that you do not do a lot of the things that you planned to do gathering material for a travel story.

As the great Robert Burns once said, “The best laid plans of mice and men are gang tae go awry”

Robbie Burns described my feeble research efforts to a tee. However, I do have some pictures of Rottnest and my memory is still operating in a reasonable manner so, perhaps next week, I’ll try to get some words down about that sun drenched isle of beauty that is just 45 minutes from Perth and a million miles away.

Endless summer fun for the youngsters.

And as the sun sets brilliantly in the west we reluctantly say farewell to our beautiful holiday at Geordie Bay on Rottnest.

You want to bet?

Hello dear Font of Noelage readers.  

I have been very slack in attending to this blogsite in recent times. 

Mea Culpa, Mea culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa

You may be interested to learn that this is my 93th post since September, 2012. Hopefully I will bring up my century in the not too distant future.

Just for interest my output has been:

2012    25 posts ( in four months)

 2013   31 posts

2014    25 posts

2015    11 posts.

Which means that I averaged 2.89 posts per month up until 2015 when I only managed 11.

I have given myself a good talking to and will try to apply myself more diligently in 2016.

Over the years I have received very few comments, so I hope that this year some of you will let me know what you're thinking and maybe even suggest a topic or two.

After a feast of tennis at the Australian Open I thought it appropriate to start this year's blog with a sporting story...of sorts.

You want to bet?
The BBC and Buzzfeed news organisations have claimed that some professional tennis players are fixing their matches in order to receive payments from organised gamblers. The claims were made in January on the opening day of the 2016 Australian Open Tennis Championships in Melbourne. Tennis authorities quickly held a press conference strongly denying that gambling was affecting results in major tennis.

The BBC and Buzzfeed stuck with their stories. The next day well known players, including champions Novack Djokovic and Roger Federer, said that in years past they had been approached to throw games for large sums of money. Naturally, these players had refused to give in to the temptation of easy riches.

At the same time some betting agencies indicated that they had monitored many tennis matches over the years where the sudden flow of large amounts of money on relatively minor games had caused them to suspend betting because of a suspicion that the matches were rigged. Halfway through the Australian Open the tennis authorities held another press conference to say they were setting up an independent investigation into the question of match fixing in tennis, which three days earlier they said did not exist.

Wherever betting on sport exists there is always a risk that gamblers will attempt to fix the results in their favour. Boxing, for many years, enjoyed a sour reputation in this regard. Organised criminals saw fixing fights as a sure way to win big money from the bookies by arranging for the fancied boxer to ‘take a dive’ against a lesser opponent who was at very long odds to win. ‘Tanking’ became a popular description of boxers who regularly “took a dive” to reap huge rewards from gambling syndicates.

Horse racing is another where gambling syndicates often try to manipulate the results so as to reap a substantial betting coup. This may be done by bribing a jockey or by administering drugs that affect the horse’s performance for good or ill.

Cricket also fell foul to players fixing matches. The most notable, and surprising culprit being the former South African cricket captain, Hansie Cronje. He had a reputation as a squeaky clean, highly moral person. However, when South African cricket authorities starting making enquiries about match fixing, Cronje stunned the sporting world and confessed that he was indeed guilty. At one stage it seemed that every second cricketer in Pakistan was involved in some form of betting scam. Bookies were taking bets on such things as which ball of which over a bowler would bowl a No Ball or a Wide. Plenty of cricketers were happy to oblige until cricket authorities cracked down hard.

One famous instance of cricket betting, which did not seem to raise too much fuss for some reason or other, was during an Australia versus England test match at Leeds in 1981. Two Australian players, Denis Lillee and Rod Marsh, bet against Australia winning in the game that they were playing in at the time. At that stage of the match Australia seemed to be in an unbeatable position and the pair were wandering around the ground where they saw a betting tent with the bookies offering odds of 500 to 1 on an English victory. Denis and Rod decided, at those remarkable odds, that they would have a small wager on an English victory. They said it was just a joke. It just so happened that two England players, Sir Ian Botham (145 runs) and Bob Willis (5 wickets) performed magnificently in the last two days of the game and England, after being dismissed cheaply in their first innings and being asked to follow on, claimed a famous victory. Rod and Denis picked up seven thousand five hundred pounds from the bookies. Nobody accused them of throwing the match but they did need to do a lot of fast talking at the time.

One of the greatest sports betting scandals involved the Chicago White Sox baseball team. They had won the world series in 1917 and were odds on to win it again in 1919. They didn’t. There was a lot of suspicion about the result. Following an investigation, in June 1921, eight White Sox players were put on trial for match fixing. Prior to the trial two of the eight admitted their guilt. However, during the trial quite a lot of evidence went missing and the two players changed their plea to not guilty. The jury took less than three hours to find all of the players not guilty.

However, baseball had been plagued with stories about match fixing for some years prior to 1919 and a respected former federal judge, Keneshaw Landis, had recently taken over the reins of a much more muscular Baseball Commission. Brandis refused the reinstate the eight suspended White Sox players. Making his position crystal clear he said, “Regardless of the verdict of the juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of involved ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.”

I wonder if the International Tennis Association will be so strong and unequivocal if its investigation uncovers tennis players who throw games for money from gamblers?

Over the years our TV screens have been saturated with commercials from betting agencies explaining how easy it is to bet on almost anything. In football for instance, apart from betting on which team will win, you can bet on who will kick the first goal, what the margin will be at the end of each quarter and so on.

Even the regular commentators are conscripted into talking about the various betting odds on offer. It is  tediously repetitious for most viewers, who wonder how long it will be before betting commercials, like cigarettes, tobacco and alcohol, will be banished from our television screens.

Throughout the Australian Open, the television coverage was constantly interspersed with commercials about William Hill, a large betting company. As part of the advert, viewers were told that William Hill sports betting was a joint partner with Tennis Australia and the Australian Open. I wonder what the investigation into betting on tennis matches will have to say about financial arrangements between sporting associations and betting agencies?

A wise man once said if you sleep with dogs you wake up with fleas.