By Tim Boykett

You Will Go to the Moon was a book I devoured repeatedly as a child, as was A Big Ball of String. The two together give us the living in cramped quarters, lots of ropes and uncomfortable adventure living. CoC was obvious.

Wood is perhaps the ultimate sustainable product. It stores energy, it is light, strong, flexible and can be burnt. It grows more or less by itself with a very efficient usage of the available solar radiation. Why would you build with anything else?

A sailboat that does not give way to the wind sufficiently is too “stiff.” Not resilient. As a single-hulled vessel heels away from a gust, it is spilling wind and becoming more stable. A multihull, on the other hand, is hardly blown over by the winds, but when it starts to heel, it loses stability and becomes more easily tipped.

To err is human. To arrr is pirate.

Tear it all down and start again. Whether it be the dams and power stations on the Danube, or the water level control of the Murray, the organised trading of water rights and power usages, it seems that these two rivers, with their immense reserves of power and irrigation resources, are also locuses of desire where strong voices want them returned to a natural state of freedom. It seems that freedom and water lie together. The permanently docked barges along the rivers and canals on Belgium and the houseboats of the Murray are populated by people who are trying to eke out an existence away from the mainstream. They have sold up and shifted on, or have run away from the troubles that burdened them to spend some time somewhere with glittering water, natural forces and a feeling of being in a primaeval place.