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4:03PM Tuesday 02 December, 2008

River resident's adventures

26 September 2008

A boat sinking was one of the more unusual things that Noosa River houseboat resident Lynie Gorrow observed on the river this week.

Usually it’s the abundance of wildlife – birds, fish and stingrays that catch her eye.

Lynie, an energetic 58-year-old sold her house at Peregian to try life on the river.

After seven years, she says that most of all you can’t panic and you have to be alert. You have to let out the ropes at high tides or risk floating away, learn to wash with a few litres of water, survive with solar power and you must bring your boat out for maintenance every 10-14 months.

It’s a quite lifestyle, but she loves the isolation.

“It’s like an alternate lifestyle, but not so alternate that you’re living in the bush.”

Brought up in Sydney, Lynie is of Italian heritage and with that came derogatory name-calling.

“I’ve been through two sets of name calling,” she said.

“The first one was ‘dago’ and the second one was ‘wog’.

“I had a chip on my shoulder for a while, but for the last 30 years my attitude has been ‘bring it on’.

This attitude recently landed her a job as a security officer on the set of the soon to be released Baz Luhrmann film Australia.

The experience saw her head to Kununurra on the Ord River in WA, where the Packer-owned Carlton Hill Station became the movie landscape for stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

She said her job entailed checking anyone going in and out of the designated film area, so she was able to have plenty of interesting conversations with the stars and their spouses, who she describes as all being lovely people.

Jack Thompson was also part of the troupe, (he’s a classic, she said) as was another security guard, Billy Rudd – yes, a cousin to our PM. The extreme temperatures, up to 55C, weren’t a deterrent.

It was such a fine time that Lynie is hoping that another film security job will be coming up soon.

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