nofrills
30-09-2004, 04:15 PM
howdy all
my wifes grandfather lived his life at noosa and past away a few years back aged in his 90's.at the end of his life he was pretty well blind with only one leg and a crippled body but his mind and speech were fine.he spent his time recollecting his life and his daughter,my mother in law,had the patients to write down his stories.
he worked out of his shed in the back yard of the house he built at noosaville building boats and doing general engineering
work.
today the family still owns his house and is used as a holiday shack buy his decendants of which there are a hell of a lot.ill bet old pop would still love to be around to do a trip outside and nail a few.but he would prolly go crook at us when we got back for drinkin too much rum and tellin to many lies.
anyway heres one of his stories i thought might be of interest.
i was born in Gympie in 1907.
My father had spent 12 months of his teen age years before the mast including ship wreck off the tip of cape horn and this plus a lot of reading of the adventure stories of those years with plenty of books about treasure hunting built in me a desire to have a life by the sea.
Since i could'nt see any chance of getting away to sea in a big boat i decided to build my own small boat and at least live by the sea.
November 1928 i launched my 20ft auxilary boat still with some hope of sailing the 7 seas in it.i had built the boat in gympie and at a cost of 5lb transported it by horse waggon to Tewantin.At a furthef cost of 5lb i built a shed for it from a pulled down shop.Coming from gympie only at weekends we had some wonderful times.
When the building trade slowed down at christmas i would come to tewantin to eek out an existance to keep soul and body together with deep sea fishing.Snapper fishing was a good past time and we had some excellent catches.In those days a surprising number of boats would go out'' over the bar''.A sailing companion C.Adams and i together could handle my boat very well.On one dark night with no light we glided so effortlessly through the bar that our very anxious companion had not noticed and continued to voice his fear buy saying''i wish we were over the bar''.
When mackerel season was on we had to take the weather as it came.On one occasion i went out when i should not have done so.
My companion this day was a 20 stone man who was slow and easygoing.Out as far as Jew shoal we decided to turn back as the weather was too bad.In the dull light and rain i mistook the reef for the bar and went to ''run in ''too far north.Realising my mistake i turned south parallel to the wave.Iwas busy scanning in the dim light for the other beacon and running ''beam on''to the sea.
My easy going friend said quietly''you want to look behind you''......Had he moved quickly to the other side his weight would of trimmed te boat sufficiently to lessen the impact of the huge breaker that was ready to break over us.I tried to pull''astern on''but to late it just rolled us over.I was in serious trouble and had a job to get disentangled from under the upturned boat where the soden rope would'nt let me go.Fortunatley my lungs were in good condition and i survived.We were picked up by another boat coming in just behind us and our boat was towed to the shed at Gympie Terrace.However all that could float off the boat had done so and beached at North Shore.The next day we went to pick up the lost items and making a litter out of 2 paddles,on foot we carried it back in one trip.I still marvel at lasting the distance.
There had been several other narrow squeaks on the bar and this incident had shaken me.I realized that the boat was too short for the bar and sold it for little more than the cost of material.
My boat had not taken me on the 7 seas but it did take me on adventures''over the bar'' and to witness the beauty of dawn on the lakes,and a trip to Mooloolaba at sunset to see the Glass House Mountains reaching up through the pink tinted clouds - truly sights to behold.
J.A.McKenna.
my wifes grandfather lived his life at noosa and past away a few years back aged in his 90's.at the end of his life he was pretty well blind with only one leg and a crippled body but his mind and speech were fine.he spent his time recollecting his life and his daughter,my mother in law,had the patients to write down his stories.
he worked out of his shed in the back yard of the house he built at noosaville building boats and doing general engineering
work.
today the family still owns his house and is used as a holiday shack buy his decendants of which there are a hell of a lot.ill bet old pop would still love to be around to do a trip outside and nail a few.but he would prolly go crook at us when we got back for drinkin too much rum and tellin to many lies.
anyway heres one of his stories i thought might be of interest.
i was born in Gympie in 1907.
My father had spent 12 months of his teen age years before the mast including ship wreck off the tip of cape horn and this plus a lot of reading of the adventure stories of those years with plenty of books about treasure hunting built in me a desire to have a life by the sea.
Since i could'nt see any chance of getting away to sea in a big boat i decided to build my own small boat and at least live by the sea.
November 1928 i launched my 20ft auxilary boat still with some hope of sailing the 7 seas in it.i had built the boat in gympie and at a cost of 5lb transported it by horse waggon to Tewantin.At a furthef cost of 5lb i built a shed for it from a pulled down shop.Coming from gympie only at weekends we had some wonderful times.
When the building trade slowed down at christmas i would come to tewantin to eek out an existance to keep soul and body together with deep sea fishing.Snapper fishing was a good past time and we had some excellent catches.In those days a surprising number of boats would go out'' over the bar''.A sailing companion C.Adams and i together could handle my boat very well.On one dark night with no light we glided so effortlessly through the bar that our very anxious companion had not noticed and continued to voice his fear buy saying''i wish we were over the bar''.
When mackerel season was on we had to take the weather as it came.On one occasion i went out when i should not have done so.
My companion this day was a 20 stone man who was slow and easygoing.Out as far as Jew shoal we decided to turn back as the weather was too bad.In the dull light and rain i mistook the reef for the bar and went to ''run in ''too far north.Realising my mistake i turned south parallel to the wave.Iwas busy scanning in the dim light for the other beacon and running ''beam on''to the sea.
My easy going friend said quietly''you want to look behind you''......Had he moved quickly to the other side his weight would of trimmed te boat sufficiently to lessen the impact of the huge breaker that was ready to break over us.I tried to pull''astern on''but to late it just rolled us over.I was in serious trouble and had a job to get disentangled from under the upturned boat where the soden rope would'nt let me go.Fortunatley my lungs were in good condition and i survived.We were picked up by another boat coming in just behind us and our boat was towed to the shed at Gympie Terrace.However all that could float off the boat had done so and beached at North Shore.The next day we went to pick up the lost items and making a litter out of 2 paddles,on foot we carried it back in one trip.I still marvel at lasting the distance.
There had been several other narrow squeaks on the bar and this incident had shaken me.I realized that the boat was too short for the bar and sold it for little more than the cost of material.
My boat had not taken me on the 7 seas but it did take me on adventures''over the bar'' and to witness the beauty of dawn on the lakes,and a trip to Mooloolaba at sunset to see the Glass House Mountains reaching up through the pink tinted clouds - truly sights to behold.
J.A.McKenna.