Peter's Page

Welcome to the Peter's Christmas Letter. Under Construction
Peter’s News
Another busy year for the White’s has just passed. Finally all our children have finished with their schooling, and have either moved on to further education, or gainful employment, or both. I have clocked up my 13th year working for Colgate-Palmolive, and whilst the prospects for Australian manufacturing aren’t particularly rosy, Colgate it seems will survive for the foreseeable future. Apart from the work habit, most of Melodee’s and my time is taken up with, either dragon boating, other fitness pursuits, or sailing.
Mel and I are both members of the Sandy Point dragon boat club. We train on the Georges River, and attend a regatta about once a month between August and the following March. This year for the first time I made it into the NSW state Grand Masters dragon boat team. To be a Grand Master, you have to be aged 50 and over. The training involved, paddling in 6 sessions a week, plus a lot of other cross training. The culmination of all the hard work was competing at the National Championships in Canberra in April, in the mixed (10 boys and 10 girls) and open (20 boys) teams. The reward was gold and bronze medals respectively.
Sadly, my dad, Jack, passed away in March. Jack’s eulogy was the starting point for the whitemorton.com web site. I am a self taught web site designer with my first effort being the dragon boat club web site sandypointdragons.com (worth a look). Putting the family history in a repository for all to view is something I have wanted to do for some time. It is a task that is gaining some urgency, whilst the family members of my parent’s generation are still alive. So far I have done a lot of scanning of old photos, and restoring them with photoshop. There is still a lot of work to do, and I am sure it will keep me busy for years to come.
This is our second year of ownership of Jessie. Jessie is a South Coast 25 trailer sailer. She is a small yacht with a retractable keel, and was not named after our daughter, but rather came with the name. Though we really enjoy spending time on her, our busy lifestyle gets in the way, and we don’t spend enough time on her. Mostly we just sail up and down Botany Bay, which is big enough for a day sail. We haven’t been out the heads and in the ocean since bringing the boat up from Port Hacking to its new mooring in Gwawley Bay (near Silvania Waters). Boat ownership has its fair share of maintenance headaches, and one of the annual chores is anti-fouling her bottom. By the time we got around to it in June, it was a bit over due. We motored Jessie around to a boat yard in Woolaware Bay. An enormous travelling crane lifted her out of the water, and we had the considerable marine growth blasted off her bottom with a high pressure cleaner. After much scaping, sanding, puttying, priming and two coats of anti-fouling paint, she was back in the water 3½ days later. It was a steep learning curve but next year the job will go smoother and quicker.
In July Mel and Peter did a Marine First Aid course. We both already had our senior first aid certificates, but this was different because we learned to administer injections and suture wounds. We are now experts at sticking needles in oranges and sewing up chicken thighs.
Each year Eastsail send boats up to Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays, to participate in Hamilton Island Race Week. Known as the seven sided sail, it takes 3 legs to get to Hamilton Island, 1 leg for race week, and 3 legs to get back to Sydney. In 2010 we did the first leg which was sailing from Sydney to Southport on the Gold Coast. This year in August we did the third leg of the seven sided sail, which was from Yepoon to Hamilton Island, about 260 nautical miles over six days. Our boat was “Iago”, a Beneteau First 40, and a very nice boat it was to sail. There were 4 other crew aboard plus the Eastsail instructor. The duties were shared around, and everyone got a turn at skippering, being at the helm, navigating, cooking etc. Except for the first night when we sailed over night, each night we slept on board anchored in a secluded bay in an idyllic island setting, including South Percy Island, Scawfell Island and Thomas Island and North Lindeman Island. Finally on the last day we sailed to the marina at Hamilton Island.

Melodee’s News
The Big Day Out was a hoot earlier this year. Me and Whitey got to see Primal Scream, Nick Cave, Gipsy and the Cat, Bloody Beetroots , Bliss n Esso, Pnau, Angus and Julia Stone, Crystal Castles, Birds of Tokyo and best ever fire tricks with Rammstein. As seasoned concert campaigners we went armed with enough water, food and most importantly sun screen. We found ourselves handing out dollops of sun screen on and off all day. Some of the younger crowd in the boiler room thought we were a bit of a novelty and asked if they could take photos of us.
We also went to see Roxy Music when they toured and had a fantastic time bopping away. It was one of those concerts where everyone knows all the words. Fantastic sax, unreal guitar and vocals, as well as sexy dancing girls young enough to be our daughters.
This time last year I managed to bulge a disc in my back which put me out of action for way too long. As I couldn’t paddle I turned my attention to completing my education to become a sweep for the dragon boat. This entailed steering the boat backward, forward and round corners through all sorts of water and weather conditions. Once I was confident I booked my accreditation examination which I passed no trouble. This gave me my P plates so to speak and I achieved my full Level 3 status after completing 4 races without incident. An incident is either a collision or capsize or some other team lodging a complaint against you for interference.
In November I did a paddling test known as an ‘erg trial’ for selection into the NSW State Team. I was thrilled to do a PB and find myself the 6th strongest erg result out of 31 contenders. This gives me a good chance of getting into the A boat of the mixed crew which has the best chance of getting a place at the National in Melbourne in April 2012. At the end of January all paddlers will do a water trial where you have to paddle the boat by yourself over a distance of about 180-200 meters in the shortest time you can. The result of this trial is where you earn your place in the team.
During the first 6 months of the year I completed a Certificate III in Home and Community Care which was for work purposes. I have also completed training as a Food Safety Supervisor which means I know almost so much about food safety that I can’t find any take away shops I want to buy food from. I am thinking of buying some Zaphod Beeblebrox sun glasses that go dark at the first sign of danger.

Jessie, Sam and Tom at thr Rix's Christmas, Dec 2011

Tom’s News
Seasons greeting all, this is yet another gripping instalment of Tom’s news for your reader’s digestion. This year I officially qualify as a refrigeration mechanic ending three years of further education. While I cannot say if I will continue this trade indefinitely at least I have a trade under my belt. Once more I have had the privilege of participating in the Southern Cross Kids Camp initiative this year which aims to provide a week of safe happy memories for kids from at risk background. In conclusion next year I plan on travelling and exploring the world.

Sam’s News
This year I completed a Certificate 4 in Website Design at TAFE. I spent most weekends out with my friends and don’t really have anything to complain about. It’s a good life. Highlights of this year included hitting level 30 in League of Legends, spending a whole week straight playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, and all of the anime I watched. Like I said it’s a good life.

Jessie’s News
After finishing high school last year (2010) I applied for a course in Certificate 2 in Animal Studies at Taronga Training Institute and was accepted. I got a job at a cafe in Miranda fair in May so that I could buy a car and drive into the zoo to attend my classes. In June I got my first car, a metallic grey ford falcon AUII SR which I’m completely in love with. I drive two hours into the zoo every second Wednesday to attend my classes which last four hours. I have already finished my practical component at the zoo and got to work with the carnivores and even saw the tiger cubs 2 days after they were born, they were super cute. I have learnt a lot and am enjoying my course thoroughly, however I hated my job. All because of my banshee of a manager who insisted on making the lives of anyone younger than her a living hell. So I went job searching again and applied at Hanrob, a local dog boarding and training facility. I was accepted and am now working there and left my other job gleefully and with a noticeable skip in my step. The work at Hanrob is very hard, it’s not all playing with the fluffy wuffy puppies. I spend about 5 hours hosing the kennels and you would be surprised at how heavy a bucket full of poo is. But I’m still enjoying it a lot more than I did my other job. I have also set out on several personal quests, the first being to change Mum and Dad’s boat name as it is extremely frustrating when they say my name but aren’t talking to me, if things don’t change soon I’m going to start a petition. My second quest is to get mum to let me have a dog, this is progressing extremely slowly but I like to think that a year and a half of nagging is starting to get to her... at one point in time I decided to ask her if I could have a dog once every day to see if she would break. She proved quite stubborn and quickly shut down that approach and thus thwarted me again, she is a formidable opponent. I spend the majority of my free time cuddling my cat who is fluffy and extremely cute. Mum and Dad complain about her a lot but they really adore her even though she has taken to using mums leg as a scratching post, though that is partly mums fault because she just shoos her away instead of disciplining her. She is a black domestic long hair who manages to get into everything your doing (or eating) and revels in your affections. She also has a strange love of cable ties and has been known to tear a hole in a new bag of them if she can’t find hers. In the last year I have some physical changes. I got my ears pierced for a third time and they are still painful after nearly 4 months. I also have a tattoo on my ankle that I got on schoolies (no I was not drunk and nor do I regret it) it is a swallow with a vine with a rose on it, which is a representation of Dad whose tattoo also has a swallow and a rose. Apart from that not a lot of interest has happened since our last letter, accept that I think I had the worst 18th birthday on the earth. I know that sounds like I’m being depressing but would you really be happy if you had glandular fever and couldn’t even blow out your candles on your birthday which happened to fall on the day before your HSC maths exam and got woken up at 4 in the morning because of a huge ass huntsman spider falling off the wall and running under your bed... I thought not.