Alison's story
21 June 2006
These photos were taken a long time ago, but my attitude towards adventure hasn't waned. I spent most of my teenage years in Devon. As well as going to school I spent many of my holidays exploring Dartmoor on horseback and later on foot. I had a go at canoeing and dinghy sailing, as well as the Ten Tors and attended an outward bound course in Wales. By the time I had reached the age of 16, I had crossed the English Channel to France and the Channel Islands, by yacht, with the Ocean Youth Club and was also an active member of the Dartmoor Recue Group.
I spent so much time in the outdoors as a teenager that it was only luck that I managed to get to university and achieve a BA degree! I travelled extensively in my holidays to France, Germany and Holland in one trip, daring myself and a friend to hitch hike through East Germany to Berlin and across the Berlin Wall to the East. A further trip took me down to Greece and, in the cold depths of winter, with a companion travelled to Spain and across to Morocco. After graduating I took time out to work on kibbutzim in Israel. Hard work , but it satisfied my fascination for other cultures and their lives.
Returning to England, I found a job in London where not long after I met Geoff, who was to be part of my adventure through life to come.
We were reunited in New Zealand in 1979 after a year apart - I had to complete a teacher training course. We spent a year travelling to the Pacific Islands, Australia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Kenya. Working in London for two years we set off yet again for a year travelling to the Caribbean Islands, Venezuala, Ecuador, the Galapagos, through the Darien Gap on foot from Columbia to Panama and further on to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mexico and the USA to Washington.
Back in London, in the same jobs, we planned our next adventure. Inspired by the sailing adventures of the 19 foot yacht "Shrimpy" and the earlier adventures of the Hiscocks, we decided to fly back to New Zealand and buy a yacht and sail it via the Great Barrier Reef, Asia, Sri Lanka and the Red Sea back to England.
The 1933 yacht "Corsair" was bought in Auckland in 1986 and slowly refurbished but only scantily equipped we set off in July 1987 for Fiji. What an ordeal it was! The wind constantly blew from the North and our plans for going to Fiji were dashed. Even Norfolk Island was a difficult prospect.
After 10 days, the wind finally moved round to the south east as we hit the trade winds and some 7 days later, we spotted Amadee lighthouse at the entrance to Port Noumea. We breathed a sigh of relief as we only had a cheap plastic sextant for navigation and we were never really sure where we were. Our sea legs were well and truly established when we set ashore on the Noumea wharf and found it hard to co ordinate properly for a few hours.
Three months later we made the 8 day trip to Bundaberg in Australia and spent the next few months sailing and exploring the islands and anchorages of the Great Barrier Reef and other sheltered harbours along the east coast.
1988 was to be a big change in our lives as late in the year we made landfall in Papua New Guinea and stayed for nearly 10 years.
After a brief trip by plane back to New Zealand to finalise our PNG work visas, we returned to start our first teaching job in a remote part of the Gulf Province. We couldn't take Corsair with us so we left her on a mooring in Bootless Bay, under the watchful eye of Ron Prior, for 18 months . We visited in the holidays to tidy up and relax, snorkelling and sailing on and around the nearby islands and reefs.
1991 we set sail again to the western part of PNG after securing jobs on the island of Daru (the "town of a 100 good mornings" we called it as we had to say good morning 100 times every day walking to work each day from the harbour). It is situated a couple of hundred kilometres north of Thursday Island in the northern Torres Strait. We stayed here for nearly four years working hard for this period entertaining, teaching and being entertained by the richness of cultures that abound in this region. This was a place where being alive was feeling alive and we were privileged to be part of it.
Geoff's story
21 June 2006
Old photo of me on a dugout on the Paya River in the Darien Gap, Panama
*I was born in Lewisham, South London in 1953
*I moved to Burgess Hill, Sussex when six months old with Mum (from London), Dad (from Lancashire), older brother Steve and younger sister Sue. This was home for the next six years. Across from the house was a large area of woodland. In 2003, revisiting Burgess Hill, the wood had been replaced by an industrial and commercial complex with a Mac Donald's right opposite the old family home!
*1960 - in a caravan on a dairy farm amidst the slag heaps of old coalmines half way between Bury and Bolton, Lancashire - Dad doing his teaching course near relatives. This was good fun, with loads of other kids. On a much later revisit to the slag heaps, the whole area had been turned into a wildlife reserve, complete with ponds and orchids. Better than being filled with a home for Big Macs!
*1961 - 1966: Back to Sussex and living in a council house in what was then a newly created suburban extension of the old town of Crawley. Our first TV (black and white), timorous adventures in the first car - a beat up Anglia and then, with growing prosperity, longer trips in a Commer campervan - down through France, the Basque country and Valencia. My adventures had begun.
*1966 -1969: Sailed to the East African coast in a passenger liner through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. Dad was on a contract with the Tanzanian government and our family spent an exciting three years living close to the beach and a fringing coral reef. Long and unpredictable safaris took our family across the length and breadth of Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia and Malawi as far south as the Victoria Falls. These were formative years - I developed a passion for the world's wild places and the diversity of life in them and a sense of Man's blunders in the pursuit of progress. Together with this my exposure to young Tanzanians of Arab, Indian and African backgrounds and the ideas of passionate teachers led me to a firm belief in the equality of all people and a strong distaste of racism.
*1969 - 1971: A long ocean trip down the East African coast to Durban and, for me, an eye opening trip through Apartheid South Africa was followed by a brief return trip to England and then back to Africa - this time the inland capital of Kampala, close to the Northern shores of Africa's largest lake - Victoria - and the start of it's longest river - the Nile. Uganda was politically in unstable times with ethnic tensions leading to two coup attempts and the bloody arrival of Idi Amin. In Kampala I finished school with A levels in Chemistry, Physics and Maths but with the simple desire to spend my life in the wilderness, wherever that was. I spent two months in what was probably my most enjoyable job as a volunteer at an ecological institute close to the Zairean border - tracking elephants, counting hippos and buffalo and driving researchers in the middle of the night to watch how hyenas and lions interacted.
*1971 - 1974: Three long years at Sheffield University, studying Zoology. Coping with being a young adult in a large city without having learnt any social skills was far more difficult than the zoology course. Lucky enough to escape to Fiji (where Dad was working) several times during this period - climbing up and down mountains and river valleys, exploring the outer islands on copra boats and the fantastic underwater life of the reefs, Everywhere, I discovered and enjoyed the warmth and hospitality of Fijian families : my introduction to the Pacific.
*1974 - 1975: Before I got my degree, I was off to New Zealand via Fiji - working and travelling by motorbike the length and breadth of the country. I hitch hiked or bussed or trained it back across Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Yugoslavia ( as it was then), Austria and Germany arriving back flat broke and itching to get back to the Pacific.
*1975-1976: A year's postgraduate course in teaching was to be my ticket to return to the Pacific : close to the fantastic mountains of Snowdonia and the North Welsh coast at the University of Wales - I spent much of my spare time walking and camping in the mountains.
*1977-1978: There were few teaching jobs in Britain in the late 70s and I moved to London after graduating - I met Alison while working in a government office at Lisson Grove.
Life got quite a lot more complicated for a few months. Eventually I headed off for my first teaching job in a small school in Timaru, New Zealand, while Alison did her own teacher training course in Hull. She flew out to join me at the end of 1978 and our joint adventures together began.