Chapter 8: The Trip Continues

Monday Week 3

The next morning, Peter set off carrying his surfboard. He only had to walk about 500 metres to the surf beach. Dave and Jill went in the opposite direction to the shore of the lake. "Are we going to get worms today, or what are you using for bait?" asked Jill.

"I'm using squidgies" he replied.

"What are they? How do you catch them?" she asked.

Dave showed her his rod that he had rigged with the soft plastic wriggler and jig head on a short piece of normal fishing line attached to 100 metres of braid line.

"This is a squidgie, a soft plastic little fish. You can get them in lots of different colours and sizes, depending on what you are fishing for, what natural feed fish are having at that spot, and other factors.

"Being scented and with a natural taste, they have a lot in common with live bait, but without the hassle of getting and keeping live bait. The fish generally seem to like them which of course is very important" he told her.

He cast out then worked the lure by flicking the rod and winding the reel slowly, watching carefully for the tell tale sign of a fish taking the bait. Once he had wound the line right in, he cast it out again. He told her that he just kept doing this until a fish struck. Right then, he felt the gentle tug of a fish biting the soft plastic lure. He struck, by flicking his rod up so the fish bit firmly on the hook, then wound it in. Jill was quite excited when he finally got it onto the shore.

Once he had removed the fish, he gave it to her to put in the fish bag, and cast out again. He gave her the rod and showed her how to wind it in, but she didn't want to cast it and that saved Dave from having to untangle the likely knots she would get if she made a mistake while casting.

They managed to catch three fish.

"That's enough for breakfast, so we'll stop now" Dave said, adding "I don't like catching any more than I need to eat."

"What do you do with them now?" she asked excitedly.

"Well first we have to scale them and then gut and clean them" Dave said as he showed her how to scale the first two fish.

"Here, you have a go" he said as he handed her his scaler and the third fish.

Dave was again impressed with her willingness to learn and her lack of squeamishness that some girls showed. His own daughter was a classic example; she loved to eat fish, even catch them, but hated taking them off the hook while they were still flapping and absolutely refused to scale or gut them.

"Now we have to clean and gut them like this" he told her as he drove the blade of his sharp pocket knife into small hole at the bottom of the fish and cut up to the head, then removed the gut and intestine, scrapping inside to make sure it was clean. It was a messy job and he kept rinsing the fish as he cleaned it in the edge of the lake.

When he had cleaned two fish, he again said "here you have a go with this last one. Careful with the knife though, it is very sharp."

When the three fish had been cleaned and the gear packed up, they walked back to the RV to start breakfast. He was also pleased that, apart from talking about fishing, she had not babbled on. Dave was not really a morning person and liked a bit of peace and quite, especially before breakfast and particularly when fishing. So it had been a very relaxing start to the morning.

After breakfast, as Jill and Peter were cleaning up and preparing to do the dishes, Dave told them he was off for a ride. By the time he got back, Peter had gone surfing again. Jill was sitting in her shorts and strapless bikini top reading the paper, which she told him she had bought at the kiosk. Dave did his floor exercises before showering and changing into his holiday mode of shorts and T-shirt. He grabbed a cold drink and climbed up onto the deck of the RV to sit with Jill.

Jill was squirming around, stretching her neck. "What's the problem?" Dave asked.

"Oh, just a bit of a stiff neck" Jill replied.

"I know what caused that. What you did last night" Dave said cheekily, and added as Jill blushed profusely starting to apologise, "don't worry, it's perfectly normal. I'd worry if you didn't do it. I hope you don't mind me enjoying watching you, though, because you are so beautiful."

Before Jill could say anything Dave got up and stood behind Jill and put his hands on her neck. He had done some massage training and he often used to massage Chloe, especially her neck and back and she loved it. Without saying anything, he started to massage Jill's neck and shoulders. As she had her strapless bikini top on, her shoulders and neck were full exposed. After a few minutes of firm but gentle massage, Jill started to relax

"That feels so good, the soreness is almost gone. Thanks" she said softly.

"You are welcome anytime" Dave said.

They went back down to get lunch ready. Jill said nothing about what he had said to her. She realised after all she had told him about her and Peter when they were on the harbour cruise that she could trust him and he was just being honest with her, so she felt a little flattered and resolved to try and relax even more with him.

They all jumped into the 4WD after lunch and drove around looking at the sights. Dave also did a little shopping in the grocery store while the other two went to the post office to post the letters he had encouraged them to write to their parents, letting them know that they were OK. When they got back, Peter decided to go for another surf and Dave encouraged Jill to go with him.

"I am going to cook you something special for dinner" he told them.

While they were gone, he got out his wok and the things he had bought earlier. He was going to make Thai Spring Rolls. First, he stir fried some minced pork with finely chopped garlic, added fish sauce, oyster sauce and sugar, then glass noodles he had soaked briefly in water and cut up, before also adding bean sprouts and some coarsely chopped spring onion. Finally he added a little water and stirred until it was all cooked. He beat an egg in a small bowl and got the spring roll wrappers from the freezer. He already had some sweet chilli sauce in the fridge that he had made just before he set off on the trip (much nicer than the bought stuff, he reminded himself).

So now all he had to do was place a tablespoon of the filling about a third of the way from a corner of the wrapper, fold the sheet over the filling, fold in the ends and then roll up, brush with the beaten egg and seal tightly. They were then ready for deep frying just before they were to be eaten.

Dave loved cooking Thai food, so he had also bought the ingredients to make Fried Cashew Nut with Chicken, which he would serve as main course with boiled rice. For now, he just prepared the ingredients by chopping the mushroom, baby corn, onion, garlic and chilli. One of the good things about Thai cooking was that although there was a fair bit of preparation required, it could be quickly cooked at the last moment.

When Peter and Jill returned, they could smell the aroma of Dave's cooking.

"Something smells great" Peter exclaimed.

Dave asked Jill to set the table (fork, spoon and bowl he told her) and asked Peter to open a bottle of white wine. He then deep fried the spring rolls and served them with his special sweet chilli sauce.

"These are the best spring rolls I have ever tasted" Peter enthused and Jill, with her mouth full, simply nodded her full agreement.

"When Chloe and I were on our way to England via Asia, we spent several days at Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. One of the things we did while we were there was attend a whole day at a Thai cooking school. We learned to cook several Thai dishes and really enjoyed them. Both the spring rolls and what I'm serving next we learned on that course."

But he happily let the other two clean and wash up after dinner and let Jill made the coffee. They watched a show on TV, before deciding on an early night.

Dave locked up, repeating his routine from the previous nights, calling out goodnight as he climbed into bed. Peter followed Dave in using the bathroom and climbed into his bed, and then it was Jill's turn. By this stage Dave's light was off, as Jill came out of the ensuite – naked. She climbed into bed and cuddled up to Peter.

It didn't take Peter long to get the message that Jill was ready and available and so he was soon making love to her. Dave noticed, as he had the previous night, that this didn't seem to take overlong, and Jill didn't seem to make much noise, although she did appear to be enjoying it. Again, Dave was watching from his vantage point in bed, where he could see, but not really be seen. Jill seemed to allow the sheet to fall off them, so Dave not only managed to see Jill's breasts, but when Peter rolled off her, he could see her whole body, as it was another moonlight night. Jill then lazily pulled the sheet back up and covered them.

Dave went to sleep with his hand gentle stroking himself.

Tuesday Week 3

The next morning they set off again driving up the coast to Newcastle, where Peter was keen to try the surf at Merewether. Dave and Jill just sat on the beach watching while Peter surfed for an hour, talking and enjoying each other's company. Suddenly there was a commotion as the shark alarm went off. All the swimmers and surfers were quickly getting out of the water.

Peter came over to Dave and said "we may as well get going, not much point in hanging around here. I certainly don't fancy surfing with a shark."

So the three of them piled back into RV after stowing the surf board and continued driving up the coast to Hawks Nest, on the northern peninsular of Port Stephens. It was a lovely spot, with a good mixture of housing for locals and holiday makers. Before setting up camp, Dave drove them around the town and all thought it was a very nice place, especially for holidays.

The water looked very appealing, so they all went for a swim. Peter had taken his surfboard, so when Dave said he was going back to get dinner ready and Jill said she'd had enough swimming too and would come back and help him, Peter opted to stay a bit longer and have a surf.

While Dave and Jill were getting dinner ready, Dave asked "why don't you tell me a bit more about your early life and what made you set out on your adventure with Peter?"

"Well, as you already know, I was born in Melbourne. My mother died soon after the birth of my young sister. Our family, who have always been fairly poor, live in an outer suburb to the west. Apart from dad and my sister, there were my two brothers, who are both older.

"I always struggled at school, but as much as anything, I suppose, it was because it was so difficult to do any homework having no privacy. I shared my bedroom with my sister, who was a bit of a tomboy and who always played loud music in our room. Both my brothers were fairly wild and always seemed to be in trouble. They hung out with the local gang."

"I'm surprised you struggled with your studies. You seem quite smart" Dave told her.

"Thanks, but I barely scraped through my Higher School Certificate. My father certainly didn't encourage me to study and was always at me to get a job as well as making me help out at home, although I always noticed that neither of my brothers seemed to get the same pushing and rarely did anything.

"During the last couple of years of high school, I worked part time in the closest McDonalds, riding my bike to and from work. This cut further into the limited study time. Even when I finished school, I continued there for a while until I was able to get a part time job as a waitress in a restaurant in the next suburb. That meant that I was working Wednesday to Saturday nights, but I hated riding home in the dark. Unfortunately, there wasn't much option as there were virtually no buses and I certainly couldn't afford to buy a car or pay for taxis.

"The hours I worked didn't give me much scope for a social life or participating in sporting activities, but at least I kept fit with the bike riding.

"Riding home from work one night, I was waylaid by the local gang. They started to muck around with me, laughing, grabbing my boobs and trying to kiss me. But as it turned out both brothers were with the gang, so, although they didn't actually stop the gang members taking liberties with me, they did at least let the gang know that I was their sister and fortunately the gang members then decided not to do anything else to me.

"After that night, however, I noticed that my brothers started to become a bit more familiar with me. They seemed to always be trying to catch me getting undressed or in the shower. Pretending they were joking, they would often make a game of one holding me while the other tickled me. They invariably managed to fondle my breasts while they were doing this, but always tried to make out it was an accident."

"Didn't you do anything about it?" Dave interrupted.

"No; who was I going to tell? My father certainly wouldn't help" she replied sadly.

"Did you have any more trouble with their gang?" Dave asked.

"Not really, I tried to steer clear of them. It was a few months after I met Peter when the gang had molested me and my brothers started getting a bit too familiar. So when Peter suggested this hitchhiking trip I was very keen to get away from where I was living. We both agreed to save all we could to enable us to get a small nest egg for the trip. Peter started to get more casual work and I managed to get other shifts when I could; I even went back to McDonalds for a few extra shifts.

"We started looking for gear and found that there was some good cheap stuff at a Charity Shop. Obviously we couldn't carry much, especially as Peter wanted to take his surfboard with him. Eventually, we had all the stuff that we thought we needed, although we did wish we had managed to save some more money, but as things at home seemed to be getting worse, I was keen to set off.

"My father kept hassling me, expecting me to contribute extra money to the family coffers as he knew I was working more hours. It didn't matter that my brothers weren't contributing because neither had a job. They seemed to be getting more and more familiar with me too. They'd even tickled me between the legs, right up high."