I Have Owned Some Turtles, These I Just Watched

Thank you Mum, Dad and the kids for those ‘come back!’ ‘come back!’ messages of encouragement during the last couple of weeks.

I warned you kids, DO NOT to play with the computer!

My Blogpatrol widget tells me precisely how many people have read the blog, where they come from, what time of the day they log in, what search engine they use, the resolution of their computer screens, the operating system they use and the type of web browser. This is Big Brother! So I know how depressingly small is my constituency.

Which leads into the fact that the holiday I took recently was on account of my own big brother who, with his partner, was making just his second return to the southern hemisphere after leaving NZ 46 years ago. I have traveled north to spend time with them several times this decade but I managed to convince them they were well overdue for another look Down Under – 1982 was the last time.

The Heron Island trip was part of our time together. They were very keen to see the Great Barrier Reef before global warming stuffs it completely. I understand Heron is one of only three cays which has accommodation. If your vanity demands a five-star resort experience then Heron’s not for you; stick to Cairns or Townsville, Hayman, Lizard or Hamilton, even though they’re not actually on the reef, but if you want an inspiring experience with perfectly tolerable living conditions then Heron is the place. Give it a Google. Heron is only 18 hectares, much of it is forest and there’s almost 100,000 birds living there, including nesting under your room. The snorkeling and diving are tops. You can swim with the sharks and the rays here, they don’t bother you (it’s true!). If you do go, spend the extra money and take the helicopter rather than the launch from Gladstone, it’s fantastic flying over the reefs and the pilots are a fount of knowledge. We were lucky to be there during the turtle egg laying season, one of the best in recent years. Each night at high tide as many as 80 green turtles (and the occasional loggerhead) come up out of the sea to dig their nests where the vegetation meets the sand, laying up to 150 eggs each. If you get up at first light, you’ll also see many of them lurching back down the beach to the water having completed their tasks. They are fascinating to watch; nature in all her splendour.

Another compelling feature of Heron is that your mobile phone doesn’t work nor does your wireless broadband. Stuck out there, you don’t give a hoot in hell what’s happening in the outside world. Whatever is happening, it’s bound to be bad news anyway.

I can wean myself off racing almost instantaneously so being cut off never bothers me. If I had a single other skill I could drop racing and go do it without a moment’s hesitation. But I’m 60 next month and virtually unemployable, so that isn’t going to happen. When you get to 60 suddenly it hits you: shit, look at all the things I haven’t yet done in my life and to think I may have just a decade left to get my act together – if I’m lucky. You have a panic attack at the thought and for the first time in your life the meaning of the old saw “live each day like it’s the last” sheets home to you.

Such a day was the Saturday before Heron, when my guests and I were in Melbourne. Sydney is extraordinarily beautiful – take a week off like I did, just to appreciate its breathtaking vistas – but Melbourne is more humane and if it had Sydney’s climate perhaps everyone would live there. It's growing at a faster rate anyhow. This particular Saturday, not far off the official start of summer, it definitely did not have Sydney’s climate. I think it was the coldest Melbourne November weekend on record, the mercury managing to creep up to about 8 degrees celsius. My guests came from Toronto where 8 above can be interpreted as a heatwave at certain times of the year so they were disappointed about the weather but inured to it. As they were shopping for Chinese-made Australian souvenirs, I took refuge in the Elizabeth Street TAB and watched a filly I race in partnership win at Kembla Grange. Horses do that when you’re not there. Anyway, it lifted me out of my meteorological depression. I was just as pleased with the win of another filly in NZ, Tampiko (3f Lonhro-Ancient Song) as I had bought her for $500,000 at Easter ’07. She might be OK. They got stuck into her over there as an early two-year-old which amazed me as I thought she was a relatively immature but nevertheless stunning first foal but I’m pleased to see she has survived this far.

Doubtless lots of interesting and newsworthy things have happened in the racing and breeding worlds since I went bush and I don’t intend commenting on much of it, except for an extraordinary article I saw on the Racenet news service a short while back in which the writer, one Brad Waters, tore new Melburnian jockey Glen Boss to shreds after he had ridden a treble at Moonee Valley. I’ve tried finding this article on Racenet’s news archive but it’s either been removed or reworded on legal advice or appeared earlier than the archive cut off date and is no longer available, otherwise I would have reproduced it here. The standard of journalism on Racenet falls short of the Pulitzer Prize but that’s OK, it’s an umbrella website used by a lot of people for a lot of different reasons and it's here today, gone tomorrow. But this vitriolic piece by the shrill Waters (who’s he?) was an astonishing critique of possibly Australia’s number one money rider, right down to how he sits in the saddle and where he points his elbows. I’m not a member of any jockey’s fan club but even so, this guy Waters was clearly having a bad night. Did anyone happen to read it?

Resisting the necessity to return to normal working habits, I have been to my mail box only once since my holiday ended. At this point in time I have just one sale catalogue in front of me, Book 1 from Magic Millions (somebody read my blog earlier this year). I also have the Inglis Easter preview. Sales of a different colour. I will begin looking at yearlings on Wednesday. Why I’m not sure.