Don Westlake’s Eulogy for Eli

Friends

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits

And are melted into air, into thin air:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

Shakespeare of course. Just a few lines of Prospero’s immortal lines, from The Tempest. Which I quote, not because they parallel in any way, the awful event that brings us together, but because they express the huge feeling of emptiness that I - and perhaps you too are left with.

Now I want to share with you, friends, as best I may, an account of the precious days, Nigel and I recently spent with this young man – for man he had become, in every best sense of the word – just a few days spent sailing “Missa Solis” (Mass of the Sun) – up the East coast. Some of you will recall, our send off from Bobbin Head, before we set off to Hamilton Island in the Whitsunday Group.

We spent our first night moored inside Barrenjoey headland sheltering from a stiff nor-easter which moderated during the night. But next morning a South West gale warning was issued for the whole of the NSW coast and further North. So skipper called a conference – should we leave now or wait for things to settle. The conference lasted all of 10 seconds. Broke up with Eli bent double, laughing, when one of us said – it could have been me – “Shit! If ya run for cover every time there’s a breath o’ wind you’re fucked before you start!”

Ten or so miles north of Barrenjoey, we saw our first whale migrating north. Magnificent sight - this huge hump back, rolling out of the waves, with the morning sun casting nuggets of gold over the sea. Eli all over the boat with his camera.

Don Westlake

Must have been about then too, he hooked his first tuna. Nice fish, four or five pounds. Came up very nicely in the pan. Eli proved to be an excellent sea cook.

Turned out some very nice dishes, Tuna based.

The days passed slowly. Two hours on the wheel, four hours off.

There were lots more whales, a huge pod of dolphins teasing around the bow, and a couple more tuna lifted out of the sea.

In the meantime the gale was building to force eight. It was getting hard to hold the boat to the wind on the port quarter.

You’d slide down the face of a wave, hit the trough and she’d try to round up everytime.

It seemed to us, the sails and the mast needed tuning, but it’s more likely now, the rudder stock was already starting to fracture.

But whatever it was, I will always see Eli at the wheel during the height of that gale. No moon.

The night black as a crow’s arsehole. Wind tearing spume off the top of the waves.

And from where I stood looking up through the hatch, the great foaming rollers, coming up astern,

seemed to hover a metre or two over Eli’s head, before they sizzled under the boat, and the stern rose,

him forcing the wheel to starboard to hold us on course. By the dim light from the cabin I could just see his hands,

white on the wheel and his face, peering out of his wet weather gear. All grim determination.

He was in total command, of what was to prove, a very exhausting situation. He’d come a long way.

I’d known him from day one of course. I remember an airgun target shooting competition on the farm one Xmas.

He was so small, I had to hold the gun for him to pull the trigger. They were the years of dressing up.

Acting out his own little scenes. Then primary school. Parts in end of term plays.

remember he played the cello at one school break-up concert.

Then the years of teenage depression – the hormones running riot. And the years of rebellion.

No more of that classical music shit! Let’s get stuck into the hard rock or whatever. Turning his back on the family. Spray cans, graffiti, all the rest of it.

But this wasn’t the bloke at the wheel that night! This was a new young guy, groping his way through what I like to think of as The Hero’s Journey.

The search for his own Holy Grail. The very centre of himself. And having come close to finding it, here he was, taking life full-on, whatever it threw at him.

He was independent now. He loved his work. He loved his family and his friends. He’d come to love himself. And his life.

He said to me once on that cruise: “It feels so good to be on track at last Don.

I’m not sure where I’m going, but wherever it is I’m having a ball. I don’t want to make a fortune Don. I just want to be comfortable. Just comfortable.”

When the steering finally collapsed, he was first to act. Grabbed a facemask from somewhere, put his head over the stern, and checked the rudder.

It was still there. Sort of. And he was right there, with his Dad, when they lifted up the cockpit floor to check the linkage.

Next day Missa Solis – Mass of the Sun – was lifted out of the water and put on the hard at a Southport Marina.

It was a Friday afternoon. It would be Monday before a shipwright could be found. Nigel took off to visit a friend at Byron bay.

Eli and I spent the weekend together.

Lots of time to yarn across the saloon table, play some of his favourite tracks, and steadily work through the case of Coopers beer stowed beneath one of the bunks.

He talked about the end of rebellion. He talked about his new creative vision of life.

He talked lovingly, of his parents and his friends. And he talked lots about acceptance, whatever the circumstances. He amazed me!

He wanted to me to hear, in particular, his father’s latest track – a re-orchestration of Missa Solis, Mass of the Sun.

When it was finished we didn’t talk for a while and then he said:”How does Nige do this Don? Where do the ideas come from.”

And I said, “Well Eli, being in the fourth generation of musical families on both sides helps. But really, it’s a gift from the Gods.”

He liked that.

Looking back, I think it was the last thing, of any significance, I said to him.

I started with a quote from Shakespeare. I’ll close with another. Last scene from Hamlet.

Our indecisive hero has died of a wound from a poisoned sword.

And now Horatio, the closest of his friends, speaks the famous words:

“Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight sweet Prince. And flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.”

And then Fortinbras, the triumphant Norwegian General, commands his soldiers to lift our Prince of Denmark onto a stretcher and issues the order that brings the tragedy to a close: “Let four captains bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage. For he was likely - had he been put to the test – to have proved most royal!”

 

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