We were wrong to assume that the weather we experienced at the beginning of this Southern Hemisphere summer is the rule for Moreton Bay for this time of the year. There are definitely storms, there is definitely hail, heat and humidity but not with such a clockwork regularity and intensity as it happened recently.
We figured this one out by the weather we’ve been experiencing in the new year, as well as by reading a couple of articles in the local magazine. The titles read:- ‘From Christmas joy to violent storms, our islands cop a pounding, a drenching and a tornado ‘twister’’, ‘Islanders caught in the worst Gold Coast storm in a 100 years’. It was exceptional.’ Once in a hundred years event! Aren’t we lucky?!
We started the New Year with completing our final sightseeing objective in Australia.
‘Land Ahoy!’ the captain exclaimed more than a year ago when seeing for the first time Aussie land on the horizon. What were these pyramidal land formations that were filling the horizon?
The Glasshouse Mountains. Many millions of years ago magma pushed into old volcanoes vents forming what is known as intrusive plugs. These fascinating rock formations are what is left from these plugs after the surrounding land eroded over millions of years!
The Glasshouse Mountains were named by Captain Cook in 1770 when he was sailing north along Australia’s east coast aboard Endeavour.
In his journal Cook wrote ‘these hills lie but a little way inland, and not from each other: they are remarkable for the singular form of their elevation, which very much resembles a glass house, and for this reason I called them Glass Houses’.
For us, this final land exploring venture was also an opportunity to meet and catch up with fellow Romanian adventurers (www.radupaltineanu.com) – sharing experiences and bouncing ideas of each other, with a Sailor’s Rum by the fire.
With the weather improving we would have gone sailing more often after the brilliant Australia Day sailing escapade to Tangalooma, off Moreton Island if it wasn’t for an electrical fault to pop up on our engine at the worst of times. Precisely when we were getting ready to drop the hook at Tabgalooma with the tide ripping at 4 knots in our stern and the wind pushing us from behind right into the shallow waters. The boat engine will not start! We managed to safely drop the hook under sail.
On return from our Australia Day sailing escapade, we needed to diagnose and address the issue on our engine. This saw the Captain and our vessel entangled in an electrical mess for weeks!
We were lucky again to get help from an electrical guru, friend of our friend, with diagnosing and addressing the issue, otherwise our starved pockets would have suffered yet another blow!
