When Penguins “A Pier”

It’s been a while since Kerry and I have been able to head to the coastal town of Inverloch on Victoria’s Bass Coast. So Monday a week-and-a-bit ago we tried a quick trip there to have what’s almost become a ritual for us – a meat pie from Paul the Pieman Bakeries, then a quick trip to the pier, where we, along with generally a dozen or so people, sit and enjoy lunch, a beautiful view, and fresh sea air.

And watch the seagulls watching us eating those pies and hoping to snatch something. (Which has happened, and caused both consternation and amusement in the past…)

The day was one of the last nice(ish) early winter days, and with Phillip Island only 30km away by sea and a sizeable Little Penguin rookery on the Island, we were surprised, but not overly so, when we spotted a Little Penguin on the boat ramp. It made quite a tableau so I went as close as I could get with my phone. (See photo with inset.)

It was at the extreme end of handheld zoom of the phone’s camera but I grabbed a picture, went back to the car and we sat enjoying the tableau: seagull, penguin, half a dozen cormorants fishi- . . . (Imagine a screech of brakes here, okay?) No – couldn’t be, it was so much larger and looked nothing like . . . Could it be?

And while we were still wondering, there it went – after fifteen minutes of sitting stock still pretending to be a penguin, the large cormorant unfolded its wings and pulled its head out from under, and we felt like a right pair of fools…

I’ll fast forward a bit now, to eight days later, when it was such a perfect sunny warm day again that we decided spur of the moment to go there again. We bought another bakery lunch and parked in the identical spot, glanced over to the boat ramp and – seagull, “penguin,” little shags fishing…

Talk about your deja vu… We decided that this was just the Universe having a really good chuckle at our expense.

Another pier memory:

Last year almost to the day we went to the pier to have our usual lunchtime and then decided to walk over to the walkway that leads onto the pier, and where you can look into a shallow area of beach where the water’s clear as glass on a windstill day, which this was.

You can see all the way down to the gravel and sand, it’s lovely. Kerry stayed, entranced by the scene, while I decided to walk back to the end of the handrail behind us and go around, so off I went. It was a matter of maybe five-ten seconds, walk a few steps uphill, swing around the back handrail, walk the same number of steps back down towards where wife was still scrying in the glassy surface.

Happened to look back behind me just in time to see a ute (aka a truck in the USA) rolling back towards me at some acceleration, took a few more BIG steps back and watched the ute roll back until the still-open driver’s door snagged the handrail and brought the vehicle to a standstill, engine still running, the older farmer type running the few steps to it, climbing in between the railings to get into the cab and drive it back up.

I watched him as he realised that the door was bent and pretty much wasn’t going to close. He walked around a few times, scratched his head, got in and SLAMMED the door until it grated into the doorframe – and drove off.

It wasn’t until he was gone and we were sitting back in our car that it hit us both how close things had come to ending me. The vehicle only missed me because the door slowed it down enough for it to come within a few centimetres of dragging me. It was heading directly to the boat ramp, where there’s a sharp drop-off into a several-metres-deep channel. I’d have been either run over on land or dragged into the channel and quite possibly snagged and unable to get loose…

So the shakes and trembles didn’t strike right away but they did strike, a bit hard. Sometimes, when one door opens, you survive.

Good News

By the way, Kerry got the “remission” word several weeks ago, no more chemo, and now time for her recovery and convalescence. We’re both hopeful and positive, but also prepared.

PS:I’m adding this “Not Today” category – I’ve always wanted to write down these kinds of Kodak moments in life, so … damnit, I’m a Grumpy Old Guy writing his memoirs…