Thomas Acres First Fleet

Seeking serenity in a wasteland

Lester Cypher found serenity and purpose in his life about the time many men born in the same era responded to having neither by embarking on legendary midlife rebellions.

While these peers sought fulfillment in sporty cars, racy women and trendy investments, Cypher's satisfaction came from old pickup trucks, an uncommonly patient wife and storing up, as the good book says, treasure in heaven.

Cypher has lived in this contented fashion most of the last quarter century, as he tells it, since God arrived entirely out of the blue, over a telephone line. He thought he was taking a call about the services offered by his pest control company, and the next thing he knew, he and a woman from Tarpon Springs were talking about Jesus.

One unexpected thing led to another and suddenly he was weeping, confessing and, as surely as if he'd come to the altar at a summer tent revival, Lester Cypher was getting himself saved.

In this, Cypher was not entirely unlike Paul — the improbable convert who wound up writing all those letters to first century Christians — minus the wrestling with a divine spirit. Perhaps Jesus didn't see the point. Up until the phone call with the woman from Tarpon Springs, Cypher didn't deny Jesus or persecute his followers. In fact, he didn't think much about him one way or the other.

Hilda — Mrs. Cypher — did. Think about Jesus, that is. And that may have helped her through the first 30 years of their marriage, when Lester pounded too many beers and earned his living in ways that couldn't have made her proud.

"I was a slumlord," he says flatly. Waving a hand around an office four strides in one direction and less than six in the other, he says, "I'd put a partition down the middle of a space no bigger than this and put two families in here."

It was enough sometimes to make Hilda rue her choice of attire for the day they met. "She wore that red dress," Cypher says, "and that was it."

He was a 19-year-old Marine whose father had been happy to sign him over to the military. "He thought it might take some of the wise-guy out of me." She was from Brooklyn, and a lady. He moved fast. She hopped aboard, and hung on for the ride.

Nearly 56 years later, Cypher concedes he married above himself. "That woman," he says, "deserves a medal."

Some folks would say the same of Cypher, but only those who have known him since 1985 when, having twice gone bust in the slumlord business on Long Island, N.Y., he and Hilda moved to New Port Richey to start fresh. How fresh, Cypher couldn't have guessed.

Fort Denison And Its Secrets

The aborigines originally named the island Mattawi. However following the arrival of the first fleet in 1788, the island was named Rock Island by Governor Phillip. The island was mainly used a defensive and penal site and soon after the first fleet arrived a prisoner named Thomas Hill was sentenced to the island and ordered to survive solely on bread and water. For this reason the island popularly and unanimously came to be known as Pinchgut. In fact in 1959 the island featured in a movie named the siege of Pinchgut, also known as the Four Desperate Men. The island used to consist of a 49 foot high rock which was flattened through the quarrying of sandstone. When an American warship ominously circled the island in 1839, action to fortify the inner harbour was reviewed and it was decided to fortify the island. To this end in 1841 fortification began but was never completed. The fear of a Russian attack in 1855 once again caused fortification to begin which was completed in 1857. The Fort was given its present name after the then Governor of New South Wales Sir William Thomas Denison. The fortifications by the time of completion given the developments in artillery were inadequate and out of date. The fort featured a Martello tower thee only such one in Australia and the last of its kind to be built in the British Empire. Of the cannons and large guns that were affixed, only two cannons that were part of the building itself remain today. The cannon is fired each day at 1pm in order for ships to set their chronometer a practice carried on since 1906. A beacon brought in to replace the heavy gun on top of the tower is still in use together with the fog horn that was installed. Apart from this the fort is also a centre for meteorological facilities, tide gauge, and functions as a museum and function centre popular even for weddings. It is easily reachable by ferry which leaves every 45 minutes from Circular Bay.

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