QBE Outreach

  The Sea was a deep aqua blue, more beautiful than a dark precious stone shimmering under the clear blue sky. I will always remember that colour of the sea on that boat trip from Abyiang to a nearby tropical island in the Sun. I remember my wife sat quietly in the bow, having recovered from an earlier ordeal when she had awoke as if from a sudden nightmare to a raging shivering fever. We were then staying in a thatched hut on Abyiang, the guests of volunteer teachers from Australia and Canada. The schoolchildren upon hearing of her fever brought us coconuts, telling us the juice would soon restore her to good health. True to their word my wife was soon up and about as if the fever was no more than a bad dream, much to our mutual relief. We had arrived the day before by boat from Tarawa the most populated Island in Kiribiti, as our intended plane trip was cancelled due to a breakdown .We negotiated with locals who took us to Abyiang by boat, finally trekking across the coral reef...

My wife is a writer and I have managed to persuade her to allow me to publish one of her short stories, about our adventure holiday. Its Entitled Odyssey It’s midday in late July and I’m huddled in a large fishing dinghy on the Pacific Ocean. The equatorial sun attempts to penetrate the swaddling of this mummy-like figure clinging to the wooden rim of the boat. What am I doing here, I wonder, as I drink greedily from my water bottle? I could be lounging lazily in Melbourne beside a cosy fire, sipping hot chocolate. My friend, Barbara, sitting up on the side of this craft, soaking up the experience, knows why she is here. My husband, Lindsay, perched further forward on the opposite side, unconcerned about the sun’s perforating rays, knows what he is doing here. They are responding to an invitation to visit Abaiang, a small coral island, part of Kiribati (KIR-UH-BAHS) (formerly the Gilbert Islands). “Come and visit my island; you will see the most amazing sunsets,” Judy, a 27 yea...

There are many stories of animals interacting with humans, but a brutal arrangement was evident in the early whaling practises at Eden.   Today the skeleton of “Tom” the killer whale is a fascinating tale of trust and betrayal. Tom faithfully returned to Eden each year as part of a Killer whale pod who hunted whales with resident Homo sapiens. They blocked off escape routes of migratory wales, who they then chased around the bay until the wales were thoroughly exhausted. Then, close to the shoreline, the pod thrashed the water with their tails to signal the whalers to harvest the whales. The pods share the 4 ton tongues (of no use to the whalers) and their lips. An extraordinary event is recorded involving a young man and his family who perished in a small boat that capsized due to a sudden squall. His family tragically all drowned and the bodies were recovered except the father. Tom, aware of the body's location wedged under a rock entangled in seaweed, continually circ...