Rowing

After a wonderful and varied almost month in NZ we arrived home and got acqainted with our sofas, animals and other leisure pursuits again. Although Rosie had had quite a spectacular real birthday at Chateau Tongariro she had missed out on her favourite Trampoline icecream cake and since the rest of us didn't mind indulging too we used the feeble excuse of another birthday celebration for a private pigout.

For the last two weeks of the school holidays Rosie was busy with her occupational therapy programme with Amanda, a new member of our team who now visits us once a week at home. During the first two weeks though, she visited three times a week and Rosie worked intensively every day. During the second week Jessye was at rowing camp and I was teaching and performing at a music school at Mt Buller so while Peter was at work Sophie became Rosie's therapy support person playing games with her and keeping her on track.

One of the main features of Jessye's life at the moment and therefore all of ours too is her involvement in the rowing programme at Lauriston. She enjoyed it in Year 8 before going to Howqua and so was keen to give it a go this year. There are about 20 or so Year 10 girls involved and apart from a couple of single scullers they have all been put in coxed fours. Based on their work during the January camp they were assigned to their crews and Jessye managed to get a spot in the #1 crew. Training has been rigorous both on land and river with three sessions before school on the river by 6 am and one after school from 5 - 7 pm. This term the rowing season is only five weeks long with a regatta every Saturday except one. The Lauriston Year 10 girls don't do rowing in Year 9 because they're away at Howqua so they have some technical skills to catch up on compared to their peers from other schools who've had an extra year on the water. However, they come back from Howqua so fit and able in other ways that they really don't show much of a disadvantage, if any. The first regatta of the season was at Carrum, a man-made watersports river about 45 minutes from home. Rosie and Sophie came with me since ballet hadn't started yet for the year. It was a long day for them but I thought they might as well see what Jessye was up to. The basic format is that the crews race in the heats of their division, division 1 in Jessye's case, and then, after a quick postmortem and peptalk from the coach, in a final. Jessye's crew won their heat by only 30cm after an epic struggle over the 1km course with their nearest rival, a slick group from Hailebury College. Unfortunately their fortunes were reversed in the final when the same team beat them by 30cm. It was a great showing for their first time out though. There is much camaraderie during the before and after when the boats need to be rigged and then afterwards taken back to the Melbourne boatsheds and derigged and put to bed for the day.

On Waitangi Day I went to a commemoration put on by the Victorian Premiere, apparently the first time the Day has ever been observed officially in Melbourne. It was nice to be invited although I didn't know a single other person there. There were a fair selection of Kiwis including the Consul, a young blonde woman called Shona.

The next regatta was in Geelong. I took Jessye and Peter stayed behind to ferry Sophie around by tram to ballet and cello. This time Jessye's team were triumphant, winning their heat and the final comfortably which boosted their confidence. However, the Hailebury team weren't at that regatta so that showdown is still to come. Jessye says they've improved their start and other technical points considerably since they started working together so it'll be exciting to see them race over the next couple of regattas culminating in a huge 3-day event at Geelong involving 60 schools and 1600 competitors.