OUT OF THE COMFORT ZONE
Before plunging into this week’s topic, following up from last week’s article and my brief chat with ‘Macca’ on Australia All Over last Sunday morning, my expedition up the creeks to chase mangrove jacks and mud crabs was, to say the least, highly uneventful. Landed a small trevally, two undersize bream, small cod, catfish and not a sniff of a crab in the nets. With my fishing self-esteem badly battered, I did manage to restore some pride a few days later when I headed out from Finucane Island to some reef country in shallow water that I had found last year. With cooked prawns, squid and mullet for bait, I had my bag limit of five fish in short time which included blue lined emperor, malabar cod and a nice 80cm coral trout. You beauty!
But back to this week’s topic. While travelling and working in WA rural towns, Viv and I enjoy meeting locals and learning about the places we stay. A visit to Port Hedland museum last week was wonderful where we met Arnold, the original Goldsworthy Mines accountant back in 1962 and a local historical society member. Viv also enjoys doing some relief teaching while on the road, usually a mixture of secondary subjects, but this year Hedland Senior High School asked her to do a stint in the Special Ed Department, while they were waiting for a permanent replacement. With no specialist training in this area, it was way out of her comfort zone, but she was prepared to give it a go. Only parents, friends and teachers of these children will appreciate the effort involved working with these beautiful, but sometimes demanding students. Viv has been joyfully challenged, but taken to the task like a veteran, using all the creative skills gleaned from her art and dance training, albeit applied in a different scenario. She cannot speak highly enough of the incredible work that the teacher’s aides do in this area to make each day function as smoothly as possible and catering for the individual needs of the students. So while chatting one night and praising Viv about her efforts, she revealed she had dobbed me in to do likewise, out of my comfort zone. Seems another teacher at the school working with a particularly ‘difficult’ group of students found out I was doing boat training and liked fishing, so approached Viv to sound me out about running a one day session. How could I refuse? When I visited the school beforehand for a meeting, the deputy met me and advised that with this particular group of students I had better have plenty of ‘hand on’ activities prepared as they would not cope with one of my ‘talk fests’-ummm! With this in mind, I have prepared a range of activities including; marine life identification ( slide show of me and others catching fish of course ); fishing equipment identification ( yes, will show them my array of fishing paraphanalia ); fishing rigs, knots and roping activity ( centaur knot, snell rig and bow line amongst others ) and finish on a trip down to the Port with a quick tour out in the 4.2m Stessco. The gig is tomorrow, so will let you know how it goes next week.
To answer last week’s question, Angel Rings (or Life Buoys) are an essential piece of safety equipment installed at high risk rock fishing locations along the WA coastline. This week’s question is, ‘What does ‘PLB’ stand for?
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