Photographs and words by Susan Prior
The scene: dinner-time conversation at the local bowling club with friends – talking trivia, habits, morning routines …
I chime in: ‘Brian [partner] must be the only person who gets an egg for breakfast depending on the phase of the Moon for that particular day.’
Blank stares all round.
Well that had everyone puzzled!
Let me explain. But some context first.
“Time and tide wait for no man ... or woman for that matter!”
We live on Norfolk Island, a remote and tiny rock in the South Pacific. We keep four chickens, Lizzy, Mary, Kitty and Lydia (sadly, Mrs Bennet and Jane died), and one rooster – Mr Darcy. We average three, but more usually four, beautiful fresh eggs a day from our girls. When you pop them in the frying pan with a little virgin olive oil they cook up as plump as pillows, golden as corn and taste amazing on a slice of toasted Turkish with a few homegrown tomatoes thrown on the side.
I swim, give or take, about 1 km nearly every day in a lagoon surrounded by a protecting fringe of coral reef. It’s much more agreeable to swim at low tide, because there’s less wave action, less turbidity and the currents are generally more benign. While staying inside the lagoon, my swim takes me out of the shelter of Emily Bay, around a reef promontory and into the slightly more exposed Slaughter Bay, and then back. There’s no lap lane, just tropical fish, coral, and usually just me. I think I am addicted to it.
My partner is lots of good things, including loyal, hardworking, generous, loving. He can build a chook shed, raised vegetable beds, grapevine trellises, do carpentry and joinery, run a factory with 200 staff, and wash a car to a gleam normally only seen on soldiers’ parade-ground shoes. He’s a fantastic father and partner. That’s all his domain. But – and I have to be honest here – he’s not much good at frying an egg.
Me? Well I am bit of a feminist. I lecture my daughters on always being able to support themselves, on being able to wear what they want to wear when they want to wear it, on calling out sexism in the workplace, and much more. I am perfectly capable of earning my own keep – and do. I clean the gutters, change a plug, or wash that car if pressed (maybe not quite so assiduously). Given a choice, though, I prefer to fry an egg, or make a boiled fruit cake, or preserve our tomoato crop over building stuff.
Our household chores are unashamedly gender specific. He does his thing, I do mine. That’s the way we roll and it means we are both in our respective happy place. No dramas, no arguments.
But back to my swim. On the island we have two tides a day. Every day, low tide is about 1 hour 15 minutes or so later than the day before. And because I work for myself from home and I’m the boss, I structure my day around that tidal nirvana, timing my swim to optimal conditions whenever I can. Those of you who know a thing or two about tides will know that not all low tides are created equal – at different phases of the lunar cycle some low tides are higher and some are lower. In the lagoon, because of the shelter afforded by the reef, when it is what I call a low–low tide then I have a bigger window of opportunity for an appointment with my swim than when it is a high–low tide.
Building the grape trellis
And as I have already inferred, all this tidal flow, of course, is dictated by the phases of the Moon and the progression of the Earth around the Sun.
You can probably see where this is going, can’t you?
When I dash out the door in the early morning for my swim, Brian misses out on an egg for breakfast and ‘makes do’ with cereal. In my defence, I always have the beans ground and the coffee pot prepped and ready for him to pop on the stove. Then all he has to do is heat his milk and pour the coffee into his little ceramic ‘keep cup’ to take to work. A caffeinated Brian is a happy Brian. It is my public service duty to his colleagues that I ensure he ALWAYS has his coffee!
I can hear the chorus of indignation now: ‘Why doesn’t Brian fry his own egg for breakfast if he enjoys it so much?’
I would counter that question with one of my own: ‘If Brian should fry his own egg, then should I build the new chook shed?’
Absolutely not, IMHO.
Feminist or not, I will gladly and unquestioningly cook Brian his egg for breakfast whenever I am not out in Emily Bay swimming. He’s a feminist too; he can cope with cereal every now and then.
Ergo, a fried egg is NOT a feminist issue.
And for anyone who is really concerned about Brian, you’ll be pleased to know that today’s low tide will be at around 2.30 pm, moving later as the week progresses, so he’ll be getting his breakfast egg for a few more days before he has to return to a few days of roughing it.
Remote island living means being acutely aware of your place in the universe. And not having a daily routine.
Instead we have a lunar routine.
And I like that.
* Before you all tell me it is bad for his cholesterol levels, the Heart Foundation says that eggs are just fine for a normal healthy bod like Brian’s.
