Where It All Started

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Ti Canoe

Where It All Started

Well a least for me, my first boat was made from  corrugated roofing iron like the above ones. The old nail holes were filled with road tar. Some would say I have not progressed far 🙂 (photo ex National Library collection)

Sorry for a somewhat lame post today, I’m laid low with food poisoning – not pleasant.

10 thoughts on “Where It All Started”

  2. Thanks for the story. Was writing about our exploits on the Hatea River in days gone by – we used the ends off the cheese crates for transoms – no buoyancy, no life jackets and when the tide went out it was mud larking to retrieve the sunken vessels!

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  3. Hi also made the same canoe and paddled around the lagoon and creek at birkdale now all choked up with mangroves also made punts from plywood packing cases and boxing timber aah such fun regards Jeff

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  4. Yes, my brothers made one. No idea what they filled the holes and gaps with, we only had metal roads. Can’t quite recall why I was never allowed to use it, probably because I couldn’t bail fast enough.

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  5. Sounds like my old patch Russell…..New North Rd, under the railway, then down past the end of Powell St. Didn’t have a canoe,had a raft made from 4 gall kero tins on a 4×2 frame. Good old days !

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  6. Yeah, it’s not a lame post at all, mate. It brings back a lot of fun memories of boating on a nil financial gearing. Fun is inversely proportional to the waterline length remember.

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  7. That is no good,to many fresh Oysters?? Great photo of our old days. What fun we had. Get well young fella.

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  8. Nothing but boiled water for you today, sonny. Your old bod is a very good bit of kit! It knows well the old adage “Better an empty house than a bad tenant.”
    Yep me too with the tinnies. I made one with a transom and patched with tar also. I launched her on the Oakley Creek in Avondale -that part now runs through a culvert- so I had a vested interest in not canning out! It either washed away in a flood one time or some fellow pinched it and paddled down stream.

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  9. Hi, very sorry to here about your illness—not nice. That photo showing those kids in their canoes, could also have been of myself, brothers, mates. We like thousands of other kids of that era, had to make our own canoes, paddles, no buoyancy or life jackets. We too used to up the road on a hot summers day —yes we had them then—-and we would dig out the molten tar from the road edge to seal the bow / stern stems and nail holes. We too also spent many hours / days paddling up hard to get to creeks and under bridges only to come hooping down the current at great knots. We were fit, brown, and NOT getting into trouble as we made our own fun, building these canoes then fishing , paddling, exploring till it was time to come home for something to eat and do the myriad of jobs that had piled up because we would spend every spare / or not spare minute in those wonderful canoes. Thanks for the memories. Best Regards, Colin.

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