For part of one of my presentations in a few weeks, I'm going to talk about the power of story-telling events from one's own past. It got me thinking about some of the surprising or contradictory things that have happened at different times of my life. The first story shows that being frightened might be counter-productive and cause harm instead of good, but the second seems to suggest the opposite. Here goes.

1) This event occurred way back in 1986, when I visited the Northern Territory with my family. We had a long train ride to the on "The Ghan" up to Alice Springs. From the Alice, we drove even further north to visit other attractions, such as Darwin, Kakadu National Park and, of course, Ayers Rock. We learned a lot about the outback and some northern aboriginal culture and lore. I'm glad I visited these places with my parents because, as yet, my dh and I have been unable to take our kids there. Anyway, we had to drive on rough and lonely country roads through the Red Centre.  At some spots, the roads were washed over by shallow fords with murky, red water. There was nothing for it but to drive through them, and my father was always ready to give it a go because turning back seemed out of the question.. Our car was not a four wheel drive, so driving through that water caused my mother lots of stress and she shouted at him. She had scary visions of all of us being washed away up the river, trapped in the car. In the end, she refused to stay sitting there and felt safer to hitch up her skirt and wade across the ford. So my brother would climb, grumbling, out of the car to wade across before her and test the depth of the water. It usually came up no further than his lower thighs, so he'd wade back and help Mum across, holding onto her elbow. Then Dad would drive the car through, they'd get in and we'd be off again. This happened four or five times. There was a bit of friction but it seemed the best solution.

Anyway, when we reached one of our destinations, I think it might have been Katherine, there were signs up everywhere warning tourists not to wade through the water which covered the roads because lots of crocodiles had been sighted! Then Mum had a dizzy spell, thinking what a close shave she and my brother may have had. It made me feel a bit giddy too, thinking how terrible it would have been from my spot in the back seat, if one of them had been grabbed by the leg and dragged under. People told us that the road workers hadn't yet got around to putting up signs at each individual little ford in the road but they were working on it and thought it probably didn't matter much because nobody would be daft or silly enough to get into that water! Well, needless to say, Mum didn't get out again but stayed in her seat, groaning with her hands covering her eyes. I really don't think she's cut out to visit the outback and while the rest of us enjoyed it, she was glad to get home. She and Dad never went there again.

2) Fast forward about 17 years to 2003. I was expecting my 3rd baby and dh and I had taken our 2 children on our first caravan holiday as a homeschooling family. We drove east to Victoria and stayed one night at Phillip Island. We drove down to the coast to witness their tourist attraction, the Penguin Walk. Each evening when the sun goes down, thousands of tiny fairy penguins swim out of the Southern Ocean and swarm up the beach to nest down for the night in the rocky shore along the coast. There's a tourist centre with a big viewing platform for folk to watch them. When we booked, we'd been warned to rug up warm, and while we put on all the jumpers and woollies we'd taken in the caravan, the icy gusts coming straight up from the Antarctic had to be felt to be believed. They were like freezing knives, cutting straight through our bones.  For the first hour or so, we sat with no sign of any penguins. Then, in the moonlight, were a few, dark, weeny shapes waddling out of the water. We all kept our binoculars focused on them for a long time, but no more seemed to follow. Finally, Emma & I were frozen to our cores and decided to shiver back to the warmth of the tourist centre for a hot chocolate. Andrew & Logan preferred to tough it out for a bit longer, because they really wanted to see more penguins. We were happy to leave them to it.

On the long boardwalk over the sand back to the tourist centre, we came across an incredible sight. Lines and lines of cute fairy penguins like an army, marching up the sand dunes right beside us so close that  we could've reached out and stroked them. Emma and I and all the other faint-hearts walking back had a great time kneeling down to look closely at them. We could hear their squeaky little noises really clearly. The penguins didn't seem a bit shy and there were hundreds and hundreds of them. They must have come up another part of the beach when we weren't looking! We assumed there'd be more by the viewing platform and turned back and join the boys. There were Andrew & Logan with their teeth chattering, still standing in the same spot, bravely trying to fix their binoculars on a few far-away dots on the horizon. They said, "You should have stayed. We've seen three more penguins. At least, we think they might've been penguins because they were moving." When we told them about the army of penguins near us, they hurried back with us to the boardwalk, but only a few stragglers were left because most penguins had already found the way to their rocks. So in this case, being afraid of facing the cold for longer paid off, and we got a good display.  

I don't really think I can draw any lessons of parrellels between these two stories but it's fun to remember back to times past and keep stories to tell for family posterity, and that's partly what I'm going to talk about. I have many more and I'm sure we all have stacks and stacks of them. This is now long enough, but I have more to say about the value of keeping personal stories, which I'll remember for another time.  

Hope you all have a great week,

Paula