Kon-Tiki - The 1950s Documentary
As a boy I was fascinated by the Kon-Tiki Expedition. Kon-Tiki was the name of a tiny balsa-wood raft, constructed by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl. It was Heyerdahl's contention that pre-Columbian Polynesian natives had regularly made trips across the ocean in similar rafts. To prove his theory, Heyerdahl set sail in the Kon-Tiki in 1947, successfully completing a 4300-mile journey from Peru to Tahiti.
I've just heard that they've made it into a movie dramatisation which won't reach Australia for quite a while and a DVD isn't available either. However, I've bought a copy of the original documentary filmed en route with 16-millimeter camera equipment.
I've also been able to source the extremely rare book Man on His Island in which the author James S. Rockefeller Jnr. describes how he rescued a sick Tom Neale from Suwarrow Island.
Our German visitors who endured torrential rains all the way up the coast, phoned us from Tweed Heads and are now winging their way back to Germany. Their short stay at "Riverbend" was the highlight of their trip and they want to come back next year for a whole month. I told them that at our age we shouldn't even buy green bananas let alone make travel plans twelve months ahead. Still, it would be great to meet again.
Yesterday I sat on the tractor for half a day turning seven acres of grass into lawn. I'll have to do a few more hours today before everything looks like a golf course again. We have visitors from Victoria arriving on Monday for two weeks. Then we have one more couple for ten days early next month and a week's booking at the end of April. That should be it for this season. We're already one week into autumn and the nights are getting cooler although the days are still in the high 20s.
