It is great to start the weekend by hurrying along to a moving garage sale -especially one run by a person who has had an interesting life connected with the sea , including teaching mixed gas diving to great depths in Egyptian waters , an important safety role in a dive on a shipwreck at exceptional depth , involvement with the Western Australia built replica of the Dutch vessel Duyfken which in 1606 under the command of navigator Willem Janszoon made the first authenticated European sighting and landing on Australia and is writing a book about his adventurous life .
His book , now up to chapter four , will tell how an Australian boy from the Mallee country , who liked digging holes and making toy boats, went on to spend six fascinating years in Egypt , at one stage there being shouted drinks by a ravishing Russian woman , becoming fluent in Arabic and his part in commercial marine operations in Queensland , living on an island for seven years .
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European escape chariot
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In the near future he plans to move to Western Australia to build up his kitty to enable him to ship his powerful Suzuki motorbike overseas and make a grand tour of Europe until Gabriel blows his horn .
This highly condensed biog came to light as a result of the fact that scattered about the garage sale were many diving items-a wet set , goggles , snorkels , jackets with marine names, diving publications . The obvious leading question was asked , You have had some involvement with diving ?
Other items of interest which grabbed this writer's attention were three old etched hotel soda siphons-E.Rowlands of Ballarat, Melbourne, Sydney , the trademark depicting early settlers, one with a pick over the shoulder , another next to a Merino , poultry and another siphon , Bell's, featuring a top hat ; a lemonade bottle from Merbein Cordial Works , near Mildura , found during a dive , sporting a bunch of grapes in the trademark ; another bottle with a windmill image , property of the Settlers Club , Mildura ; an Arab Emirates coin , a beer bottle opener on a key ring and only one book , The Man Who Saw Too Much, about Australian combat cameraman David Brill .
Blocking the way to perusal of books in shelving was a well known book addict , a reverend gentleman who turns 90 next month , regularly seen at garage sales . One of the books he snaffled was a well illustrated volume about Northern Territory history by the late Glenville Pike, oft mentioned in this blog , his mother ,Effie , recently the subject of a post .
