Australia really knows how to show a girl a good time

If I had to come up with one word to describe Australia, it would have to be ‘beaches’. Nonstop beaches going on forever. If I had to come up with a second word, it might be wine. Nonstop vineyards going on forever. A third word? Well, maybe birds. They’re like bits of the rainbow broken off and filling the skies. Non stop birds, and I wish I could go on forever in Australia. A few of my stories are now up on www.wavejourney.com as well as www.touristtravel.com. Please check back on this site for more stories soon, I promise.

There are scads of state parks along this 575-kilometre coast, many of them having great campsites as well as day use areas. Oregon doesn’t have taxes, which always helps, and we’ve noticed their camping fees are cheaper than their neighbours (Washington and California). They’re actually an amazing deal for what you get (paved spots, no extra charge for power, hot showers, water at the site, and usually wonderful beach access.

Check out this view at the Inn at Spanish Head. We love this place. You can’t build this close to the water any more.

So many beaches to explore, so little time!

Six courses with a chocolate theme were featured during the Vanancier's gourmet cruise from Montreal to the Madeleine Islands.

Lobster pate´with sea asparagus and roe started off the feast

These tents have become very popular with newlyweds; 76 couples have already booked this year. It’s not just the spa on the beach, or the delectable meals dreamt up by chef Ben Andrew, who serves up dishes like Qualicum Bay Scallop Ceviche, but the reinvention of the tent as suite, featuring monster ‘disco’ bathtubs with coloured lights that flash in time to the pulsing of the water jets, a separate shower with ocean view, king size beds, and heated slate floors.

While the tents are well spaced, I’m thinking that honeymooning couples might want to request one of the lower tents, closer to the sounds of waves. How soundproof can canvas be? (www.rockwatersecretcoveresort.com)

This morning I took a 45-minute ferry from West Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay, hoping to escape the Vancouver drizzle by streaking over to the Sunshine Coast, a 170-kilometre strip of mainland squeezed between the Georgia Strait and the Coast Mountains, claiming 231 days of annual sunshine. (www.bcferries.com) It’s a beautiful trip. On deck, I could see the new Upper Levels Highway, soon to be leading visitors to Whistler for the 2010 Olympics. On the starboard side, curiously shaped Anvil Island hunkered between us and Sound’s end at Squamish, while on the port we passed Bowen Island, home to many Vancouver commuters and artists. Best yet, looking aft - a bluish ribbon was elbowing in between the Sunshine Coast and the sky’s grey canopy.

We dock at Langdale, and a few minutes later I’m driving down the main street in Gibsons, that little seaside town made famous by C.B.C.’s longest running series, The Beachcombers. Every Sunday evening from 1972 until 1992, the half hour show delighted children around the world. Nick Adonidas’s log salvaging boat, the Peresphone, is now dry-docked on the main corner, while Molly’s Reach, the scene of so much action, serves up food you previously could only see on television.

But I need to get to the Visitors’ Centre at Sechelt before it closes, about 20 kilometres on. It posts the best viewing times for Skookumchuck Rapids, and I’m going there tomorrow. (www.secheltvisitorinfocentre.com). From there it’s only 10 minutes to Rockwater.

And now, next morning, I am stepping out of my tent to marvel at the blue ribbon, now expanded to a banner overhead.

An hour later finds me on frosty but rapidly melting roads, coiling for 40-kilometres to the ferry landing at Earl’s Cove. Egmont and the rapids are just 5 minutes beyond. Then, a leisurely one-hour walk through moss and rain forest to the viewing point. The Skookumchuck connects Sechelt Inlet to Jervis Inlet, and on a three metre tide change, you can get 200 billions of water bucketing through this narrow passage. Long before I arrive, I can hear the cacophony of rioting waters, and the view lives up to the sound. It makes white water rafting look like rowing in your pool.

Really spectacular, but now I need to hurry to catch that next sailing.

This second ferry’s routing proves even more spectacular than the last, curling through Prince of Wales Reach and Hotham Sound toward the Saltery Bay Terminus. Things just keep getting better the further north I go, but unfortunately I have almost reached the end. Highway 101, the Pan American Highway, is the longest in the world, but its Northern terminus is 59 kilometers ahead.

Today I snub the little city of Powell River, lunging for Lund. There’s very little there except a busy marina, a boardwalk, a restaurant and Nancy’s Bakery, where cinnamon buns sell out early every day.

But there’s the historic Lund hotel, built in 1905 and deemed to be haunted. I can’t pass up a phantom, so I request the corner room where a nude male ghost has been known to perch on the bed. Instead, the owners tempt me with one of the lavish, recently decorated guest rooms, where I’ll get to soak in a Jacuzzi tub once again and lounge on my seafront balcony, watching the clouds lose the battle. Ghosts are good, but decadence decides. (www.lundhotel.com)

And in keeping with that self-indulgent theme, evening finds me at the Laughing Oyster, a nearby legendary oceanfront dining experience. The original chef, David Bowes, has recently purchased the restaurant. While I slurp oysters steamed in their own juice and wallow on to gunpowder prawns - David’s own herbal creation - the chef grabs his guitar and competently croons 70s music to accompany dessert and coffee. A singing gourmet chef; found only on the Sunshine Coast.

The next day, the final treat of the trip, a cloudless February day creeps through my curtains and I awake knowing I get to retrace my tracks.

I highly recommend this mini trip. If you’d rather not return the same way, you can take a ferry from Powell River to Comox on Vancouver Island and drive down to Victoria, then ferry across to the mainland. Whatever you decide, though, do not skip Skookumchuk.

Noisier guests at Rockwater Secret Cove Resort might want to ask for a waterfront tent

Post dinner entertainment at the Laughing Oyster

Manzanita Restaurant is Powell River's secret

Rosebud really is a ‘feel good’ story and the darling of Alberta Tourism, having won several awards in the last few years and triumphing against all odds. Its remote rural setting, for example, and the absence of the usual amenities, malls and accommodation. We visited there last fall and had an enjoyable day that blended exercise, good food, friendly people, history, and entertainment together in a really wholesome mix. You should go.

The 200 seat Opera House

I fell in love with him as a wordsmith when I was 20 and he came to the University of British Columbia to read poetry and sections from his first novel, Beautiful Losers. When he first put his poetry to music those of us who can recall those times were startled. We’d never heard anything like it before - the brazen cheek of such a bad singer believing he could actually make money with such a voice. But he was like retsina - once you got used to the shiver, you acquired the taste. And of course his poetry was always there to keep us transfixed.

Leonard took poetry and made a living from it, singing with his guitar in smoky joints with fellow poets like Margaret Atwood and Milton Acorn and Gwendolyn MacEwen. Atwood turned to fiction to make a living, Cohen made it work with music, and poor MacEwen, who never wanted to be anything but a poet, died tragically young.

Have you any idea of what it’s like to never be able to give vent to your frustrations on the road? To have to be a nice motorist all the time? Not to be able to cut somebody off, terrorize a grandmother, shake your fist at a kid? And imagine having to be nice everywhere - not just on the road. I mean smiling when you buy the milk, when you pick up the newspaper, when you go for the mail, because wherever you go, people are going to know you.

This means if you look last last December’s woodpile, and you don’t want anyone to see you, you’ve got to stay home. If you’re in a rotten mood and can’t bear to even pry your lips open to speak, let alone smile, then you’ve got to stay home.

Kind of forces you to work on your personality and outlook, doesn’t it?

Having realized this, re-formed my scowl into a twisted smile and my obscene gesture into a vertical wave, I respectfully passed the slow driver and at the same time was flashed with an insight.

So that’s why people have dogs!

Think of this. People have to be nice but their dogs can bark and snarl as much as they want to. It must be a real pleasure to be able to listen to your dog doing what you can’t, haranguing and threatening those noisy workers across the road putting in new pipes, for example.

A noisy dog is a perfectly acceptable way of saying "get lost" to passersby and neighbours, "get out of my way" to pedestrians, a way of expressing all those negative feelings you harbor. Even the sign "Beware of Dog" is acceptable.

"What kind of person doesn’t like dogs?" you may be wondering. Well I have another confession. Now I have my doubts about cats too.

Island living has made a nature lover out of me. I get off on trees and their dwindling residents. I become heady with the smell of dandelions and a colourful fireweed stalk sends me into spasms of joy. I’ve accepted the fact that I don’t own this piece of land - I’m its custodian. It’s getting harder and harder to hear a power saw, barking dog or even a lawn mower without a sense of loss!

I used to be a pushover for felines. You could always find dozens hanging out at my place in the city. Strays and hoboes passed out my address at the local SPCA. My address was splashed all over every back alley fence - a great place to crash.

But one afternoon here I heard a tree frog. Do you know how few of those little green guys we’ve got left in the world? I suddenly realized I hadn’t heard that sound for a very long time. What excitement. A frog had decided to come and live with me for a while, and maybe even bring up his family.

Then I met a garter snake checking out the back step for a nap. This encounter brought back all kinds of memories. About how we used to see snakes all the time in Vancouver when I was a kid. When did I lose sight of the fact that they had disappeared?

If that’s not enough, I’ve discovered hooded mergansers and rufous-sides towhees and nut hatches. You should see the lovely colours on the juncos.

Then as I watched the beautiful young tom from next door stalking the frog while his friend skulked in the bushes near the warbler’s nest, another insight came flashing at me, even more depressing than the first.

It was this: that these domestic pets which we love and cherish are our final assault against nature. What manages to cling to the trees and shrubs we leave when we sweep everything clear to build our homes, are finished off by our beloved pets.

Why can’t we love something for a change that isn’t ours, that goes beyond our households? Why can’t we extend the same love to the frog as we do to Fido or Puff. in fact instead of Food or Puff?

I now grant unconditional love and sanctuary to all wild creatures in my little space in the world, but not to domestic ones. I have become a monster who chases kittens and doesn’t like dogs.

And I thought island life would be simple!

His wife and constant companion, Jane, informed me in a controlled, steady voice. He had died at 5am South African time. She didn’t ask for compassion and she certainly didn’t need my tears so I banished them to that waiting place. A part of me already expected that phone call. I new because the day before a large bird had flown into the front porch - a crow.

“Light a candle”, Jane said.

Lorenzo and Jane loved birds and shared their love and enthusiasm with us, the foreigners from Canada who had never seen blue, red, purple and violet birds before: the bronze manikin, the Pine Nut Vulture, the lilac breasted roller, the red bishop. Our most wonderful moments together were watching birds at the magic lagoon near our houses in Mtunzini, Natal.

Several months ago in this same column I wrote to you of Lorenzo’s illness. You responded with cards and letters. They were read, re-read aloud, answered and then posted on an ever growing wall of messages from Canada.

"Canada continues to flow into South Africa", Jane wrote me. "People are amazing. All we hear here these days is of violence and pain, but these letters have reaffirmed what I feel - that people are basically good and decent and do care for one another."

"No tears now," Jane firmly told me this morning. "He’s continuing on his journey and it’s not a cause for mourning. Light a candle.

Thank you readers for sending your positive energy and caring to strangers, at the request of a stranger, and for allowing Canada to pour into Africa in such a positive way.

"Your love lifts us up and onward, dear friends," wrote Lorenzo in his last letter.

One final request, dear readers. Please light a candle.

From the 10 year old Sylvia who distances herself from the pain of her father’s womanizing and her
mother’s illness through caricaturing his lovers and photographing her father hugging her mother’s
ashes, to the middle aged male traveling to the funeral of an aunt who abused him as a child, we
are shown a myriad of characters who are all battered by their past. We meet young girls attacked
by their lunatic father, teenagers grown up before their time who must cope with their fathers’
desertion, or womanizing, or madness, or alcoholism. We meet daughters struggling with their
mothers’ illness or death, or the tyranny of siblings who convince them they are worthless, or the
savagery and battering of their spouses. We meet a young husband trying to reconcile the happy
memories of his childhood past with the destructive energy of his wife’s and we meet the man sexually
and emotionally damaged as a child by his perverse, sadistic aunt.

Patricia’s skill is in managing to get into the heads of so many diverse characters, from children
without the insight or skill to verbalize their experience or feelings, to aging males, and to seem
perfectly at home there. Each character is very different, yet in a thematic way, the same. They
have not been defeated by life, and they are looking for or have found a lifeline.

These are well crafted, pithy stories from an Ontario writer and teacher of creative writing. The
characters she depicts will stay in your mind.