Val Wake the Author

My Voyage Around Spray

The subtitle to My Voyage around Spray with apologies to Captain Joshua Slocum gives an important clue about the book's purpose - it reads A re-discovery of Australia. Does that mean someone called Johusa Slocum discovered Australia? No, not really.
Joshua Slocum was a Yankee sea captain who when he retired re-built an 'oysterman' and sailed it single handed around the world. He was the first person to complete a world circumnavigation solo. It took him three years from 1895 to 1898.
Val Wake discovered Joshua Slocum while attempting to reach the North Pole. That is a story in itself which the author explains in his book. It was Slocum's book Sailing Alone around the World that rekindled Val's boyhood interest in boats and eventually led him and his Canadian born wife Lil to the small Australian coastal town of Port Macquarie.
For the last 20 years of his working life Val was a civil servant working mostly for the British Foreign Office. He was head of a government film unit and radio service. It was while he was in the civil service that he seriously took up sailing and started re-reading Joshua Slocum. In Slocum's self published book he found a reference to a place called Port Macquarie on the Australian east coast. One of Lil's working colleagues knew something about Port Macquarie. The colleague's brother-in-law was a meteorologist who claimed that Port Macquarie had one of the world's best climates.
Val was nearing his mandatory retirement date. He and Lil were looking for a place to settle. The cost of living in England was going to be a severe drain on their retirement income and there was the English weather which was often cold and wet. Maybe Port Macquarie had something better to offer?
This was when Val's re-discovery of Australia started. He read all he could about the district and in 1990 Val and Lil flew out and made a reconnaissance visit to Port Macquarie. They liked what they found. They bought a unit or flat and planned to permanently move in late 1995.
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By the time they took up residence in early 1996, Port Macquarie was beginning to experience the first stirrings of the 'sea change movement' the arrival of people desperate for a sea view at any cost. The small coastal community that had first attracted Val and Lil to Port Macquarie was changing. High rises were rivalling the town's tall Norfolk Pines that once dominated the landscape.
Val bought himself a yacht which he called Spray after the boat Slocum used to sail around the world. Val became an active member of the Port Macquarie Yacht Club and began to learn what made Port Macquarie tick.
There is a lot about sailing in My Voyage around Spray but there is also a lot about the Australian character, Australian attitudes, hopes and prospects. Val uses Port Macquarie as microcosm of the Australian way of life which is changing, replacing the cultural cringe of the past with a new vibrant and cosmopolitan society that can live comfortably with the ideas of Europe and Asia and in the process produce a culture of its own.
My Voyage around Spray is published by Sid Harta of Waverley, Victoria. You can order it from the publisher's website and is available from selected bookshops. Copies can also be ordered from Amazon.com.
Val Wake the Author

Reviews

 5 January 2011 
This is a memorable piece of Australian literature. I had expected a collection of sailor's yarns, mostly adventure and more often perhaps too technical for the average dumb landsman. The funny thing is that I got it: from early sailing- Val must have been ten or younger then-on Brisbane's Moreton Bay, to selling his beloved yacht Spray at a bargain price when he was veteran of living in Port Macquarie. However, I enjoyed a lot more besides. I read the about the author's father as a prominent figure in the earliest formation of Australian intelligence services. He also has some interesting memories of the war after Pearl Harbour and the Americans hit the sleepy town of Brisbane in 1941-42. I read about early newspapers in Port Macquarie and the rather dreary townships we had before we got rich and used Victa Motor Mowers and owned in-ground swimming pools to improve the gardening, the exercise and the view. Above all, the writer is a journalist of some decades experience around the world. Some journalists never learn to write English but this one certainly has. He is a delight to read and without the reader really knowing it, he gets a course in Australian history and the history of a few other countries such as Britain and Canada, without ever feeling the pain of learning. This is a book you will be glad to read and you will hope for a sequel from a writer who does his job so well. Grab a copy while you have the change. 
James Cumes, retired Australian diplomat, Vienna
10 September 2010
Retired journalist Val Wake has led a colourful life and has rubbed shoulders with all manner of people around the world: dignitaries, spies, heroes and heroines, adventurers and more. His story is brimming with these experiences and takes us from the icy expanse of the Canadian Arctic to the rolling grasses of the English West Country and the sparkling waters of Australia's Port Macquarie. This is Wake's third book, the first being a biography of his father, Robert Wake, who was one of Australia's first spies and a founder director of the spy agency ASIO, while the second book explored the native rights movement in Artic Canada. But this third book is about the author's love of sailing, his love of the great blue beyond. In colourful detail, Wake remembers the first stirrings of his love for the maritime. In 1939 he was a four-year-old in Brisbane and was given a metal pedal car by his parents. He loved that car until the day he saw some boys in boats and marvelled at the way they could travel effortlessly without the need for exhaustive peddling. One of Wake's greatest inspirations is a sailor called Captain Joshua Slocum who sailed solo around the world in a single-masted sloop named Spray. Slocum spent three years rebuilding the vessel before he set sail in 1895 at the age of 51. When the author retired at Port Macquarie it wasn't long until he had his own vessel, which he re-named Spray, and his adventures began. His tales are not all about his magnificent sailing and competitive adventures but also about the politics of regional communities and local groups. Wake does not care for "big fish, small pond" characters and prefers to "sail alone" when it comes to a retiring life. There are many fascinating books yet in this storyteller and researcher. 
Wendy O'Hanlon - Acres Australia
20 August 2010      
Val Wake has lived the gypsy life that many would envy. Beginning his working life as a journalist, he had lived in Canada England and in 1996, settled back in Australia. The Wakes have travelled extensively and unsurprisingly, somewhere along the Val developed a passion for sailing. Val first discovered the magic of boats in 1939 when the Brisbane River broke its banks. Living in Auchenflower at the time, and after witnessing the appeal of a vessel gliding effortlessly over the brown waters, his pedal car suddenly lost its appeal. When the Americans arrived in Brisbane during the war, the face of the river changed as well. With them came the battleships and submarines. Val can remember when his father arranged for him and his brother, Andrew, to take a tour of an American submarine. Val’s father was in charge of the Brisbane port, and as the war continued, his circle of friends grew. One friend took the three Wakes’ on a fishing trip around Moreton Island. So began Val’s love of the sea which would result in his world-travelling, once by sea and once by air. After travelling to England at 19 years of age, Val’s childhood dream of sailing was put on hold as his career took various turns. In 1971, however, he read a book by Captain Joshua Slocum titled Sailing Alone Around the World. This rekindled the childhood dream of sailing. When looking for a place to retire in the 90s, the Wakes checked out Port Macquarie, a place which seemed to tick all the right boxes. In the intervening years, Val writes an entertaining account of his life which always seems to have some sort of affinity with the sea. 
"A young boy's childhood dream endured through to his retiring years – the sea, the salt and the spray – this book is an entertaining and interesting account of a life that has always seemed to have a boat lurking in the background."
John Morrow's Pick of the Week
Cover Comment
'This book digs deep into the abiding spirit of Australians. It portrays us as a people, fiercely competitive in sport and imbued with egalitarian sentiments and a quest for the fair go. In the freedom of sailng boats, the author finds himself. And there is no more important discovery to be made in this life.'
Retired High Court Judge, the Hon. Michael Kirby, AC,CMG

Articles

9th December 2010 Port Macquarie Library, NSW, Australia
One of Val Wake's former sailing companions has agreed to do the honours for the local launch of his book My Voyage around Spray (with apologies to Captan Joshua Slocum.)
Cameron Marshall, the station manager with ABC radio in Port Macquarie sailed with Val on his yacht Spray in the Hastings River and offshore.
"I am very pleased that Cameron has agreed to help me out on this. The book is a bit controversial and I may come in for a bit of flack. Having a fellow sailor will help."
Val had hoped that Dylan Phillips would be able to attend the launch. Dylan is a Royal Australian Navy lieutenant serving on HMAS Parramatta. His last tour of duty was in the Gulf rounding up Somalian pirates.
"Dylan was in Port this week for two days of home leave. He told me that he was in the officer in charge of the boarding parties landing on the pirates' boats. Once they disarmed the pirates they were at a bit of a loss what do wo with them. At the start the Navy handed the pirates over to the Yemeni Government who after a brief trial usually shot the pirates. The Australian Government has a policy that opposes capital punishment so the Navy was forced to return the pirates to their home land," said Val.
Lt. Dylan Phillips started sailing with Val on Spray when he was 14 years old. His experiences on Val's yacht led to his interest to joining the Navy. Val and his wife Lil attended Dylan's officer graduation parade in Canberra in 2004.
Much of this is in Val Wake's book which traces his early love of boats which took him around the world and his eventual discovery of Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail single handed around the word, while on an attempt to reach the North Pole.
Retired High Court Judge Mr Justice Michael Kirby has described the book this way:
"This book digs deep into the abiding spirit of Australians. It portray us as a people, fiercely competitive in sport and imbued with egalitarian sentiments and a quest for a fair go. In the freedom of sailing boats, the author finds himself. And there is no more important discovery to be made in this life."
Val Wake the Author

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