Summer Here…
by Captain Trevor Jackson
You know how you’ve got those odd moments in your life that you remember as if they were yesterday … but you don’t know why? There’s nothing special about them, could just be watering the yard or sitting on a wharf looking at fish with the kids. Just stuck there in your head, forever!
I’ve got a few, and for some reason one popped into my head just this afternoon. It was about 35 years ago, around Xmas time. I was driving along a sugar cane road in my uncle Rons’ yellow Holden Rodeo. A diesel one. In those days you could jump out and run alongside a diesel car. I remember thinking how slow this thing was and how it didn’t matter that it was slow, coz I wasn’t in any rush. This was after all northern Qld, and in northern Qld, we know how to chill.
Just then a James Taylor song came on the radio and it went something like this … “Summers here, and I’m for that , got my rubber sandals, got my straw hat”… not one of his most famous tracks but it stuck in my head for 35 years, and I still sing it out loud on days like today. Days when the water turns to glass and the horizon blends into the sky. Summer … tropical, hot … air so thick you could carve it … a mirror finish on the sea in every direction … no need for a mask , you can pretty much see everything that’s down there from the top deck … Summer… diving weather.
Now I wouldn’t want to give anyone false expectations, it does sometimes get a bit windy in summer for like ONE DAY! But in general, as we move into what folk from the good ole USA would call, ‘the holidays’, its more often than not what we like to describe as, postcard weather. Sure, a puff of wind or two might butt in and attempt spoil the fun , but that doesn’t usually happen till after ‘the holidays’; so for the time being we can ignore those and just focus on what’s real, and here, and now.
It’s been a challenging year, you’ve been driven underground by this pandemic, you’ve put in the yards, done the right thing and now the sun is coming up to remind us that it’s a big beautiful world out there. Shelve the doom, drop kick the gloom, dust off the diving gear and start singing a bit of James Taylor with me…’Summers here, and I’m for that , got my rubber sandals, got my straw hat’ …
See you on board.
