Can My Pony Come Too?

by Rosemary Esmonde Peterswald

  When we weren’t on the water, I often joined her on buying trips around Australia. Sometimes Rob came too (once to New Zealand and Hong Kong and mainland China), or it could be just Rob and me. At times I knew Rob’s mind was more on sailing than choosing the colour of an outfit, although I have to admit he had quite an eye for what would sell. One of the first brands we successfully won exclusively for Maro was Sass and Bide owned by Sarah Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton, two highly motivated, talented and successful designers and business women, whom I’d had to woo at a meeting in Sydney when we were at anchor in Double Bay on Oceania. Without doubt it was our most successful brand for many years.

  Eventually we opened another fashion boutique, Ruby Messiah, in one of the premises we owned further up in Salamanca Place. Georgie organised for the delightful Antonia Kidman to open it one freezing cold winter’s night. However, it was a fairly remote position and although it worked quite well it wasn’t nearly as successful as Maro. Eventually we joined Ruby to Maro back in Salamanca Square, where it remained until the girl to whom we sold it moved it into the centre of the city.

  It was about this time that my mother moved from Cloneen to a nursing home at Arklow by the sea in County Wicklow. Sadly, when Gill went over to visit her from Australia one time, she discovered my mother wasn’t coping. For years she’d had problems with her legs. Now they were getting worse. Viv had been at her for some time to look at various nursing homes, but my mother didn’t have much enthusiasm. Now Gill travelled far and near until she found Asgard Lodge at Arklow.

  Together with Viv, Gill helped her move to a sunny room overlooking the garden, taking her most precious pieces, including the treasured battered statue of the Virgin Mary we’d all knelt in front of for so many years both in Ireland and Australia.

  To begin with my mother was miserable. ‘It was worse than my first days at boarding school when I was four,’ she lamented to me recently, looking back to those initial days at Asgard.

  She grieved for her independence and felt confined within the small room. We were all desperately sad for her, but there was no option. She could no longer live at Cloneen on her own. Coming to Australia was not a possibility, as apart from not being able to get a visa, she was far too fragile to do the long trip. It was considered for a while that she may go over to Viv in Wales. In the end she decided to stay in Ireland close to my father in Tipperary, where she too wanted to be buried when her time came. So it was with a heavy heart that I went once again to Ireland to visit her and pack up Cloneen – thirty years, and many years before that, of wonderful memories. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in life.

  By the time I arrived, my mother had settled into Asgard somewhat. The nurses, under the guidance of the wonderful Una, Jimmy and Andrea Tyrill, are a true blessing, including my mother’s favourites, Catherine, Ruth, Chris, Cecilia, and the pretty Sindu from India, who finally wheedled her way into my mother’s heart, after having been told in no uncertain terms, ‘You, my dear, are far too young to be a nurse.’

  The problem with living to a great old age and having all your faculties is that most nursing homes, Asgard included, are full of people with Alzheimer’s. My mother is one of only two guests who are not affected.

  On that first visit to Asgard I bought my mother a bird feeder, which Ruth and I set up outside her window. For hours she watched the birds feed and fly as she listened to their happy chirps. Before she got to the stage where she was unable to leave Asgard, we would take her out for lunch, drives in the country and down to the beach at Britis Bay, where an icy wind roars in from the Irish Sea, which she adored.

  Despite my maudlin thoughts whilst packing up Cloneen, soon the job was done, with all the ancestors in their gilded frames placed carefully in cardboard boxes and the fine pieces of china that had been to Australia and back once more packed up. Viv came over to help me with the final clean-up, and later Tim arrived across on the ferry from Wales, towing the horse float to take the furniture and valuables that couldn’t go to Asgard to Cilwych.

  Chapter 36

  A Setback with a Silver Lining

  One of the things we missed about living in an apartment on the Hobart docks was a garden. On a perfect summer’s day, when out driving with Charlotte and Stephen on the east coast, we came across a beach house for sale on Nine Mile Beach, north of the seaside town of Swansea. To say it needed work was an understatement, but it was in a brilliant position, up an avenue lined with agapanthus, right on the sand dunes, with the scent of eucalyptus and heather permeating the salty air.

  With Stephen’s help we totally redid the house, knocking out walls, adding others and re-wiring and re-plumbing the lot. For days on end Stephen and Rob, together with Paul, a wonderful man of all trades from Swansea who looked after the place in our absences, rendered the outside walls. Rob painted it from top to bottom and I painted the outbuildings and fences with Hubie’s help. Rob also put in a small vineyard, as it was situated on an underground aquifer, providing us with enough water for both the garden and the vineyard. For a number of years we enjoyed family holidays, with the grandchildren playing and swimming on the beach, and long twilight evenings in the garden, or on the huge timber deck we’d added at the back.

  It was whilst working in the vineyard that we noticed Rob wasn’t quite his usual self. He was getting tired and lethargic. Dizzy at times. He became even worse when we were renovating both the house and garden, mowing the lawns, planting a lavender hedge and a rose garden at Vernon, a wonderful historic old home on a huge block we bought in Battery Point. We discovered he was suffering from a heart condition known as Atrial Fibrillation, which was taking its toll. It also meant he had to be on blood thinners and have his blood monitored regularly in case he got a blood clot. As a result of this we were loath to venture back to sea again in Oceania – away from medical attention. What if he had a bad attack? If he did, we needed to be near a hospital, so his heart could be put back into kilter by electrical currents. Sadly, because of this, we had to sell Oceania, now at Hamilton Island in Queensland, from where we’d hoped to sail her abroad.

  Eventually we decided to seek help for Rob’s heart condition in Sydney, but without much success. Although there are excellent heart specialists in Hobart, including Rob’s own talented Luke Galligan, the procedure Rob needed couldn’t be carried out there. Our last hope was in Melbourne. Here the wonderfully named Dr Sparks, who literally did put the spark back in Rob’s life, operated on him twice: once to fix the bothersome flutter; the next month for the fibrillation. To say Rob was like a new person was an understatement. Unfortunately Rob’s brother, Dick, who suffers from a similar condition, is one of the cases that can’t be operated on.

  Yet, with Rob’s success, there was a nagging thought in our minds. Had we sold Oceania prematurely? Possibly, for there was no doubt that we now wanted to go sailing again. As a compromise we decided to do a journey across the world on another sort of Oceania. This time on the cruise liner, Nautica, part of the Oceania fleet of small cruise ships.

  After a buying trip to mainland China with Georgie for the dress shops, we set off from Hong Kong. Our route took us to Vietnam (where we traversed part of the Mekong Delta), Bangkok, Phuket, Singapore, India, Oman, Egypt (visiting the pyramids), Jordan (where we had a day in the wonderful ancient city of Petra and a romantic night under the stars in Wadi Rum desert where they made Lawrence of Arabia), and through the Suez Canal to Athens. From there we went to Croatia, Turkey and through the Greek Islands, finally ending up in Istanbul. It took us forty-five days and although we’d doubts about enjoying that amount of time on a cruise ship we loved every moment of it, meeting some wonderful people whom we later visited in America and who’ve since been to Tassie to stay. We ended up in the French Alps with Charlotte and Stephen, who had decided to move to France the year before. (Charlotte had left her real estate business in the more than capable hands of her fellow partners, who continue to make the business prosper in her absen
ce.) Charlotte and Stephen and the boys were now living in the Haute Savoie in the small village of Lescheraine, not far from glorious Lake Annecy, an hour’s drive across the French border from Geneva. Charlotte has always had a hankering to live in France. Most people only dream of such a thing; she and Stephen actually did it. I take my hat off to them, for none of the family spoke any French, apart from a smattering from a few French lessons in Hobart. Soon Hubie, at aged eight, and Ru, who was just five, were installed in a small school in the village of Le Chatelard, where they were the only English-speaking children. Now, of course, the whole family is fluent.

  After six months in Lescheraine they bought the Hotel Chapet at Bout du Lac on the shores of Lake Annecy, near the delightful village of Doussard. Now they have totally refurbished and renovated the hotel and adjoining house, including the gardens running down to the lake in the front. To the side is a small canal where ducks and geese glide up and down and a naughty beaver lives, coming out in the cooler months to sabotage their garden. With stunning views of the tall mountains, often with the spectacular peaks covered in a thick coating of snow reflected in the lake as if in a gilded mirror, it’s truly one of the most beautiful spots on this earth. They can swim, kayak, paraglide, and sail on the lake in summer and ski in the alps in the winter, when all the extended family have joined them for white Christmases, skiing nearby or at the popular resorts of Chamonix, Courcheval and La Cluza, only half an hour’s drive away.

  Rob and I don’t ski so we usually have a few weeks there on the way to Sea Dreams for the summer and then on the way back to Australia. I adore dropping the boys off to school at Doussard (where I mingle with the mothers, but have no idea what they’re saying) and then have a coffee at the small boulangerie on the corner of the main street where the locals gather for a gossip, before I walk home along the pieste, one of the most beautiful walks I’ve been on. With the sound of happy cyclists, walkers and roller skaters, and the towering alps in the distance I could walk, or ride the bike I recently bought, forever. I feel I can do this too when staying with Georgie at Trinity Beach in far north Queensland (where they moved with their property business, Merchants, which is now Australia wide, and turned a beach cottage into a work of art, encompassing a swimming pool with a bursting bougainvillea vine tumbling over the wall). There I get up early in the morning and power walk along the palm-fringed beach, as the sun appears across the ocean. Or it might be a gentle walk with Eleanor and Joseph at the end of the day, before we flop into the ocean to cool down and then have a picnic or barbeque under the palms with Simon’s parents, Geoff and Josie, who live nearby.

  Chapter 37

  Sea Dreams in the Med

  Back in Tasmania it wasn’t long before the sailing bug got to us again. Rob was now healthy, and although I loved writing I was looking forward to another challenge, as was he.

  With Charlotte living in France and Georgie and family ensconced at Trinity Beach, where Georgie finished her MBA and started work as a commercial valuer, Rob and I were left in Hobart on our own, for the first time in many years. So we too decided to head off.

  One evening, when staying with Dave and Jill Henry in Sydney, we found our new boat on the Internet. She was lying in Gruissan between Montpelier and the coast of Spain in the south of France. A fifty-foot brand-new Beneteau Oceanis 50, she was still wrapped up in plastic. She seemed to have everything we aspired to on a boat, from in-mast furling, a bow thruster, to a healthy set of navigation equipment. What’s more she had a blue hull, something I’d always coveted.

  Soon she was ours. We called her Sea Dreams after a painting my mother bought in Dublin when she first married my father in Ireland in 1938. We’ve had that painting on every boat we’ve ever owned. Now that tousled-haired young boy, looking languidly out over the south coast of France, was to have his own boat called after him. Before we knew it we were fighting a huge Tramontane gale in Gruissan, waiting for her to be fitted out, where we rented an apartment from Linda Stoker, who told us ironically that her grandfather was Walter Thompson, Winston Churchill’s bodyguard. In fact she had just collaborated with the BBC to produce a series, Churchill’s Bodyguard. Over the next few weeks we spent fun times with her and her husband, even going down to see where they were doing up a two-hundred-year-old chalet situated on the banks of the Canal du Midi near the fortified city of Carcassonne.

  After a month, where we filled in the time we weren’t working on Sea Dreams, by driving around the wonderful Languedoc region and down to Spain, we hoisted the sails and set out with a friend from Mallorca for his island home. At the marina in Palma we had a generator and watermaker installed.

  And so began, apart from the odd time when one of us could happily throw the other overboard, what Rob and I often describe as: ‘The best time of our life.’

  We are now in our eighth summer of sailing the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Aegean.

  The first year we explored the beautiful waters and islands of Mallorca, Ibiza, Menorca and Sardinia, leaving Sea Dreams at Porto Rotondo on the Costa Smerelda under the watchful eye of Salvatorie, a delightful Sardinian, whose family has lived on the island for many generations.

  The next year we sailed from Sardinia to Corsica, Elba, down the coast of Italy to Sicily and across to Croatia where we left Sea Dreams in Split for the winter. From France, Charlotte and her family joined us, renting a sixteenth century villa north of Dubrovnik where we anchored in the small bay out the front. The next year they found an ancient villa on the island of Brac, not far from Split, where Eugene and Jenny joined us, as well as Gill’s Andrew, his wife, Jane (whose rendition of her own Welsh National Anthem had the whole anchorage on the island of Hvar spellbound), and their girls, Sian and Catrin. Georgie and family came to Sardinia and both families came to Greece and Turkey this year. We are also fortunate that many friends and other family members have joined us aboard for a few weeks here and there.

  We take myriads of photos and are lucky enough to sample many fine local dishes and wines for our photographic sailing books: Sea Dreams in the Western Mediterranean and Sea Dreams in the Adriatic, mostly featuring Croatia, a country we both fell instantly in love with. Apart from the magical sailing waters of the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Aegean, it’s the incredible history that this part of the world has to offer that keeps beckoning us back. To be able to drop anchor under a twelfth or thirteenth century fortress, as we often do, is not something to be taken lightly. Nor is the fact that one can anchor out front of a taverna or Konoba (as in Croatia) and hop into the dinghy to motor in for a very reasonably priced meal of local sea food overlooking our anchorage. Or it may be in the harbour of one of the ‘old towns’. Or as in the case of the Gocek Peninsula in Turkey, wild boar from the hills behind where we anchored. Or just vegetables from Mama’s garden accompanied by a wine of the region.

  Or it could be, as we experienced on the Costa Smerelda in Sardinia (made famous in the 1960s by Prince Karim Aga Khan), the most expensive meal either of us has ever been served, organised by our gregarious friend, Lenny. Sadly, he is no longer with us after a twelve-year battle with cancer, during which time he and his wife Helen sailed with us on their own yacht, Fourth Dimension. So I don’t regret it one bit. As I said to Helen recently: ‘Who would have missed it for quids?’ And I must admit it gave us great photos for our book, Sea Dreams in the Western Mediterranean.

  Presently we are compiling another coffee table book depicting special havens throughout the Mediterranean, Adriatic and the Aegean.

  I keep writing all of the time, for it is something I can never imagine not doing. To say we are blessed is an understatement; our only hiccup was that Rob was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years ago. After Bracchy Therapy treatment in Brisbane by one of the best specialists in Australia (Hobart doesn’t carry it out as yet, despite Rob’s caring urologist, Michael Vaughan being at the forefront in his field), Rob’s been given the all-clear and looks the picture of good health.

  Good healt
h is not something we take for granted anymore, so each day is lived to the full, keeping in mind one never knows what’s around that corner – or in our case over the horizon. Sitting on the aft deck with a glass of local vino in our hands, watching the sun set over the olive groves and cypress-covered hills on the beautiful island of Corfu, I lifted my glass to Rob. Together we gazed across the bay to a rambling stone ruin on the shore that was bathed in the late golden glow of a warm twilight. ‘Imagine we could have missed doing this.’

  I’ve tried to work out which part of the Mediterranean, Adriatic or Aegean is my favourite. It’s too difficult a choice for I’ve truly loved it all. From sitting on deck with my grandchildren, watching a blood-red sunset off the island of Formentera in Ibiza, to swimming at Isla Santa Maria off Sardinia, where the butterfly blue water laps gently onto snow-white beaches.

  Then there was the rugged west coast of Corsica, with towering cliffs the colour of Ayres Rock, Napoleon’s Elba, the romance of Amalfi and the tranquillity of the tiny unspoilt island of Procida in the Bay of Naples. Yet, when we sailed to Croatia, with her countless picturesque islands and sheltered anchorages with rustic konobas (traditional family restaurants) perching on the shore, and lemon and olive groves crawling up the rock covered hills, alive with lavender and wild herbs, I wasn’t so sure that wasn’t my favourite. For despite the memories of the dreadful war of the early nineties still etched into the landscape and carved deeply into some of the people’s faces, it is truly one of the most beautiful spots in the world.

  However, then there were the enchanting islands of Greece where white-washed villas danced in the sunlight and long twilights lit up the whole bay, donkeys brayed on the hillsides and goat bells resounded through the air. Or it might be the splendour of the fertile valleys and hulking mountains of the Peloponnese with its painted churches and rustic stone buildings amongst olive groves, vineyards and citrus groves, with tall cypresses dotted here and there, reminding us of the time we spent in Tuscany, but offering a much bigger, bolder canvas, on one of our rail trips from Sea Dreams to Annecy at the end of a sailing season.