MEMORIES and STORIES

 from the past - when we were young

Memories, adventures, incidents, events and happenings

Doreen and I have had an amazing life together. We have visited over 60 countries, walked, hiked, climbed, dived, jumped, motor-homed and cruised . We lived in the Caribbean for about 7 years and visited most of the islands there. We went on a Round the World Trip (RTWT) for a year.
Some of the events have been seen, or will be seen, on This Week's Picture on my home page. This page is a general reference to our memories, activities and experiences, together and separate. The source of the item is in green.

Below are some of our memorable experiences.

LATE 1960'S -  A VISIT TO JAPAN AND THE FAR EAST.
2002 MARGARET BICYCLES AROUND AUSTRALIA
2002 - DOREEN CLIMBS A 75 METER TREE.
1990 - DIVING TO SEE SLEEPING SHARKS
2002 - FISH and FISHING
1941 - EITAN'S GRANDFATHER, OUPA

If not otherwise noted quotes are from Doreen's chronicles of many of our adventures
Some are modified slightly or shortened.

LATE 1960'S -  A VISIT TO JAPAN AND THE FAR EAST.

I don’t remember exactly when but some time in the late sixties or early seventies Doreen and I visited the Far East. I have many memories of that visit, especially of Japan and Taiwan. In those days touring was not what it is today:  We travelled with cash or Traveller's Cheques not credit cards, booked an open plane return ticket and found a hotel on arrival at the destination.

We arrived in Tokyo together with tens of thousands of people participating in a convention. (Rotary?) We went to the hotel counter at the airport but there were no rooms available at any hotel. After some time they managed to find us a small room at a boarding house. Small?  We felt like we were in a cupboard. By the time we got settled it was about midnight and we were hungry so we went looking for somewhere to eat. We passed many places that were closed and asked, by sign language, where we could eat. 'Tomorrow' said the first we asked, then the second and third also told us ‘tomorrow'. We tried to explain that we wanted to eat and not wait till tomorrow but they just repeated 'tomorrow.'  We continuede looking and hoping for an open place to eat, until we finally found an open restaurant named, of course, Tomorrow.

We were told that while in Japan we should eat a delicacy made with  raw fish, called “sushi”. We had never eaten raw fish nor knew what sushi was but we decided to try and went to a recommended restaurant. With the help of the waiter who spoke a little English we ordered sushi. It arrived and to our horror we saw that it was probably Molded or bad as it had something green sticking on it. We looked at other tables and saw that other diners were happily eating the “bad” fish so we decided to do what the locals do. That was our introduction to wasabi and sushi.

From Japan we flew to Taiwan. At the tourist counter we were offered a reasonably priced hotel and the lady at the desk wrote the name of the hotel in Chinese for us to give to the taxi driver and off we went. We arrived at the hotel, dropped our bags and eagerly went off to visit the market we had heard so much about. We were fascinated with the market although we were not too happy about the animals we saw there waiting to be cooked. It was getting late so we decided to return to our hotel which was called ????. Neither of us could remember the name of the hotel or even whether we had ever known it. Our passports and money were at the hotel and we were stuck in a place where no one spoke English. After the initial panic reason took over. We took a taxi to the airport and asked for the name of the hotel to where we had been sent. They didn’t have lists or records and a new lady was on shift, but eventually  the morning attendant was contacted and remembered us and we, exhausted but happy, caught a taxi to our hotel.

To this day whenever we check in to a hotel, even a well-known one, we each take a card with the hotel name and address.

2002 - MARGARET CYCLES AROUND AUSTRALIA

RTWT - South Australia.

margaret


"One day while still in the Coorong National Park we drove then cycled to the 43 Mile Crossing,
a beach walk leading to the sea. As we were tying up our bikes, a woman approached us and we
chatted while we walked the 1.5 k to the beach. Her name was Margaret; she was thin, but not
scrawny and wore a big floppy hat over lots of suntan cream. She must have been in her 40’s.
She was cycling and wanted to know from where we had cycled. We had come from the road,
3 kilometers away. We were travelling around the world. Where had she come from?
As we walked in single file along the sandy path through the dunes and bush we sometimes
chatted, sometimes walked together silently, sometimes drifted apart.


Little by little her story came out. Margaret was from Victoria. She milked cows. She had lived in Cairns and worked as a crane driver. When her mother took ill Margaret returned to the family farm in Victoria. Her mother was better now and so Margaret decided to accomplish this idea of hers. She too had taken a year off and was cycling around Australia. She had always hoped to do it with some one, but when that didn’t work out she decided to do it alone, except for one desert when she rode with another person. She’d been riding for the last ten months. Yes, the first month was very hard and there were weeks of headwinds, when she nearly gave up. She carried about 30k on her bicycle, without counting water. There were times she had to carry 3 days water with her. And she drank 8 liters a day! She was keeping a diary and she was in contact via e-mail with a primary school back home. Yes, the experience had changed her in many ways. She thought she would go back to the farm, She’d enjoy being with her family. She still had to cycle around Tasmania and planned to be back home in two months.

Here we are thinking we are so adventurous and then we meet someone like her. A young Israeli friend, Alon Lev, had in the company of two friends, cycled about 6,0000 kilometers across Australia. This was totally unbelievable to us. Now here was a woman who was cycling around Australia over 6 times that distance by herself. One must stand in total awe of her achievement. Interesting that after such a tremendous achievement all that she wants is to return to milking cows and being close to her family. When we reached the Tasmania Sea Margaret agreed to have a photograph with us. We left her walking along the beach but she caught up to us on the walk back. She refused our invitation to ride back to our motor home for coffee. After untying our bicycles we looked around but we couldn’t see her anywhere.

No exchange of addresses nor e-mails. Just an hour spent  together on the dunes."

<The total length of the Australian coast is 39,000 Km including Tasmania but without other small islands>

2002 - DOREEN CLIMBS A 75 METER TREE.

RTWT - Western Australia
"We stopped at Warren National Park and drove through virgin karri forest to the centennial tree. There are a number of  trees in the area that can be climbed and this one is the highest. It has pegs circling the living tree to the top. I climbed about 5 meters for a photograph then looked down and decided that I really didn't want to do this and climbed back down. While we sat and agreed that it was ridiculous to do it, I looked again and decided that actually I could do it. I would not have done it if it were objectively dangerous, like raining or wet or windy. But when the fear is only in the mind I like to challenge that fear and try to overcome it. Although the rungs that are vertical look quite forbidding it is the spaced rungs that are harder to negotiate. Seventy five meters up a tree is very high and in all directions the treetops were below the platform. There is no photograph from up there, as I didn’t want my camera to get entangled in the spokes. My thighs ached for days afterwards." [link for more details]
climbing a tree

1990 - DIVING TO SEE SLEEPING SHARKS

Diving log
We have dived in many places in the world - including Sinai, Great Barrier Reef, Belize, Fiji, Mocambique, Caribbean, New Zealand and Eilat. We dived usually to see fish and coral reefs, but in Mexico off the island of Isla Mujeres near Cancun, we dived to see the sleeping shark caves. Sharks normally need to keep constantly swimming to breath but in a few places the phenomenon of stationary "sleeping" sharks have been observed.  See more here.
sleep sharksdiving
From my Diving Log: "Saw a beautiful nurse shark sleeping (about 2.5 m) with as ray right next to the slits. Also another bottom <shark>  half the same size.
Dived with Mecca Divers - a lousy operation. Also 3 pain in the neck Americans (father + son + daughter).
2002 - FISH and FISHING

Fish and fishing have played a big part in our lives, whether fishing, eating or viewing. Raising tropical fish was an important hobby, I did a year's course in Ichthyology at University and  of course I was associated with the Coral World Organization (underwater viewing towers and aquariums) for over 20 years.
We have reported on more informal fishing stories over the years including the following.

RTWT - South Australia and the Great Ocean road:
"A few days later we reached Apollo Bay and checked in at a caravan park. Next to us a family was also unpacking. Eitan went off to do the washing when I heard a knock on our door. A young girl, about 12, stood there with a bucket and a small fish inside. “Your husband asked me to catch a fish,” she said as I stood looking at her. Eitan had jokingly told her to catch a fish for him for supper. There were only 3 rods and 4 family members but she insisted that she get a rod and was delighted to be the first to catch a fish. While Eitan was barbecuing the meat and her tiny fish at the communal barbecue there was another knock and she brought another fish, a bigger mullet this time!"

RTWT - SE Victoria
"At Eagle Point we stopped at the Silt Jetties. Although it looks as if the river has carved a path through the valley, in actual fact the river has been appreciably narrowed by the build up of silt flowing through it. Eitan went fishing. When he caught only one bream that was too small for a meal Eitan reluctantly filleted his fish which we added to our seafood medley with generous splashes of Pernod and enjoyed a delicious marinara spaghetti."
fishingpilchards

"The fish festival continued when we arrived at Lakes Entrance, which has the largest commercial fishing fleet in Australia. Early Monday morning, which was a long weekend, we bicycled along the pier and stopped to watch a crane with a large net scooping out little fish from the hull of a fishing vessel. The fish were then packed and stacked high on a waiting truck. The people were friendly and didn't mind chatting. The fish were pilchards, for bait and cat food. But I remembered eating canned pilchards many years ago in South Africa and I thought that because they were so fresh, we could eat them like sardines. The foreman said if we would wait he would get us a plastic bag and sell us a kilo of pilchards, or as many tons as we wanted. They were unloading 50 tons of fish that day and did it as often as there were fish. After some time the foreman came and said that since we were so poor that we didn’t have a car (we were on our bicycles) he would charge us $2.00!  Half we fried and ate. They were like the best sardines. The other half we salted and then put  in oil and they were like plump and not so salty anchovies. Oh what a life, living off the fat of the land."

RTWT- Sydney
"We did some entertaining in our caravan when David and Sheryl Levy, Eitan’s cousins, came for lunch. It was with pride that we were able to serve up a very nice meal around a tuna and apple salad, homemade pilchard-anchovies (from our visit to Lake's Entrance) with potatoes and yogurt and a delicious cheesecake that they brought. It was nice seeing David again and getting to know Sheryl. We sat and talked for hours until it was time for us to go to the opera again."

david
EITAN'S GRANDFATHER, OUPA

Family
An account of a very young me falling out of Oupa's car without him noticing.  (Not that I remember it, but I remember being told the story many times.)

This Week's Picture 20 Dec 2025    Link