toast for tea

The Canberra Experience

2012-01-26T01:05:00.000+11:00

When I first notice the sound I dismiss it as somebody’s ringtone. There are five of us in the house – all with smart phones. Or maybe someone’s found an old radio amongst all the curios that adorn this borrowed accommodation of ours. Perhaps someone’s on Youtube. It’s just before dinnertime after one of a succession of full days taken up with seeing the sights of the national capital. Everyone is scattered around the house enjoying some down-time.

It’s not until someone calls out, ‘Is that a flute?’ that in the quiet, as we all stop what we’re doing, I allow myself to focus on the sound. Some of us go outside to listen and are rewarded by hearing the most beautiful lilting melody as it carries over the train tracks from somewhere beyond the surrounding paddocks.

Bagpipes.

We listen, incredulous and bemused. Curiosity satisfied, everyone else returns to their individual activities. I linger outside and soak up the sounds. Set against a backdrop of the calls of sulphur-crested cockatoos and a variety of parrots coming home to roost, the bagpipes – playing a traditional Scottish air – create a wonderfully unexpected and delicious mix of disparity. I want to follow the sound to see who is playing but at the same time I want to leave the identity of this unexpected piper a mystery; always the romantic, I’d prefer to wonder who it was.

Bungendore is a half-hour drive from Canberra. We’re staying in the house of an elderly couple. The husband passed away only a month ago and the wife has moved to Melbourne to be cared for by her daughter – the friend of a friend. We’re packing up some boxes of belongings in return for our free accommodation. The home is situated on the border of the township and overlooks paddocks on two sides. The train line is a hundred metres away – which is no problem for our little company of vacationers (my friend and our three teenagers) as the Canberra to Sydney service runs five times a day and twice on weekends. In fact, on our first evening at home, when we hear the level crossing bells, we yelp with excitement and dash out onto the front porch and wave to the train – all two carriages. One person waves back.

It’s an odd feeling living in someone else’s home amongst their belongings. At first, I feel like an intruder, a voyeur – an interloper into the aftermath of someone’s grief and loss. It’s a strange juxtaposition – our company of free-spirited holiday-makers living in and around the tailings of a flailing life-long partnership. Daily I regard the odd assortment of collections that adorn the many bookcases and wall units scattered throughout the house and carport, collections that have overtaken most of the living spaces and spilled out into a confusion of clutter. At first I wonder how I will survive a week amongst such hodgepodge and muddle – when it flies in the face of my minimalist sensibility – and after spending a precious first few days of our Canberra holiday with just the three of us – my teenagers and me – in a serviced apartment two minutes’ walk from the city centre. A resentment about having to commute so far each day for this second leg of the Canberra experience with our friends adds to my disquiet. However, after a day or so, I find myself enjoying the rural setting and fascinated by these curious collections, trying to construct profiles in my mind of the couple who lived here; whose entrance to their ensuite, I might add – and which contained the only working toilet – was through the back of the wardrobe in the main bedroom! (and as you might guess, immediately named ‘Narnia’ by us.)

When I return to Melbourne and reflect on our holiday, I’m not surprised to find it’s not our visits to the National Gallery, the War Memorial, the Mint, Parliament House, the High Court, the Zoo, the National Library, the Australian Institute of Sport, the cruise around Lake Burley Griffin, the Bus Depot Markets, the Glassworks, the drive up to Black Mountain and Mount Ainslie or all the other activities we squeezed into our ten days in Canberra that stand out in my mind – although I enjoyed them immensely. It’s the togetherness we shared each morning and evening in a curious little house in Bungendore that became our home for a week.

And the bagpipes, like a last post, resounding across the paddocks.

Bridge over Lake Burley Griffin

On the steps of the National Library

Pensive

Foyer of the National Library

Mother and son

Yes - it did pelt before we completed our walk around the lake

Not my best angle!

I always wanted to be an emu

Must be funny - the coffees are getting cold!

Parliament House

The Senate

Weary

Australian War Memorial

Mmmmmm

Moi et mes enfants - Australian War Memorial

Steps of the Memorial looking down Anzac Avenue and across to Parliament House

Yum - home-made pasta at the Old Bus Depot Market

One room of this marvelous market

At the Mint

In the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery

Cheeky

Sculpture Gardens

Sculpture Gardens - from inside the dome room (which had marvelous accoustics!)

From Telstra Tower Black Mountain

Canberra City from Black Mountain

Telstra Tower

Really?

Australian Institute of Sport interactive games

Ready set go!

Weights anyone?

Les enfants

Cruise on the lake - see?

And yes - we got very wet

National Library

Carillon

High Court

The Canberra Centre

Bungendore landscapes

The train!

Reflective moment

Dhungala

2011-10-04T15:52:00.000+11:00

Recently I snuck away on my own for a deliciously solitary four days in Echuca, where I lived and taught in the eighties for six years. The main objective was to do research for a personal narrative travel article on the Murray River. I'm still working on the words, but here are some pics to go on with ...

Sleeping Beauty

2011-09-04T10:50:00.000+10:00

I dash across Flinders Street when the lights change and down into the station, fingers crossed there will be a train; I don’t feel like waiting around in the cold. My first Society of Editors dinner meeting has been enjoyable and I’m grateful for being seated between the friendly Jan and Robyn. But now I am tired. All that emotional energy involved in turning up to an unfamiliar gig on your own.

The gods have been kind and I sit by the window in a six-booth. It’s empty. Good. I settle in to read the material for tomorrow’s uni class. However, the girl behind is relaying today’s psychology lecture to her boyfriend. I decide that learning about the effects of loading rats and birds up with testosterone and observing their behaviour is fascinating. Will the dominant black rat be tricked if they paint the docile white one a different colour? I close my reader and tune in.

At Melbourne Central a man sits on the seat two up from me. We make brief eye contact before he unfurls his MX. He is about my age, greying hair, paunchy, and wearing an expensive sports jacket. At the next stop, two girls get on and sit opposite, one across from him and the other next to her. The one closest to me nods off to sleep almost immediately. The girl relaxes into such a sound sleep she begins to lean towards the empty window seat next to her. Her body is tipped at such an acute angle I worry she will fall against the glass. She drops the piece of chocolate she is holding, then her phone. She stirs and picks up the phone, and as if the clatter to the floor has sparked it into action it begins to ring. She slurs into it, ‘I’ll be home soon’, then hangs up and slides across to the window seat. Within moments she is asleep again, her head lolled back almost to the seat behind her, which, fortunately, is unoccupied.

I angle my legs away as she slides further down the seat. She is breathing through her thick-lipped mouth which is wide open, as if she were one of a row of porcelain clowns at a carnival. Her skin is olive and her eyes, whenever she opens them through the slits of her lids, are dark brown, the colour of the chocolate fragment on the floor. She is wearing a purple hoodie and fashion-frayed blue jeans.
Her phone rings again, but she doesn’t stir. The man next to me and the girl opposite him glance at me before our eyes are drawn back to the phone, alive in her hand, blaring out a song off the radio. I can’t believe she hasn’t heard it. Her fingers, the nails neatly manicured, squared at the ends and painted bright red, remain curled around the phone, but do not move. The phone stops and several moments later starts up again. She remains oblivious to it. I glance over at the man beside me and he rolls his eyes.

How will she know her stop? The phone rings for a third time but she remains comatose. ‘She’s going to need help to get home, but it won’t be me offering,’ says the man. ‘I’m getting off at the next stop.’ He shakes her leg to see if she is conscious. The girl mutters something that might be ‘leave me alone’. Her eyes flit open for a second.

A woman in a seat further up the carriage catches my eye and raises her eyebrows in a ‘What will we do?’ motion. I shrug my shoulders and emboldened by the man beside me, shake the girl’s leg again. She opens her eyes and looks at me through the slits of her eyelids.

‘What station are you getting out at?’ I say.

‘Why do you want to know?’ she slurs. There is menace in her voice.

‘You don’t look very well,’ I say, and before I can finish my sentence her head has lolled back again.

We pull into a station and the man beside me says, ‘Good luck,’ and gets up and moves off.

‘Should I ring for an ambulance?’ the psychology student behind pipes up.

The woman a few seats down nods furiously. I look to the other girl sitting beside Sleeping Beauty for confirmation, but she looks away. I turn to psychology girl and say yes, ring. She dials and relays she is to press the emergency stop button at the next station. As we approach Camberwell she sounds the alarm. It is so loud it makes me jump. Simultaneously, the driver’s voice blares through the carriage’s PA, asking why the button has been pressed, and the girl suddenly comes to her senses and is on her feet. It is as if the press of the button has also activated an eject function. She lurches out between the seats. Psychology girl is explaining to the driver what has happened.

The girl yells out to everyone in the carriage, ‘I’m on drugs. I’ve had weed. I’m just tired, that’s all,’ then half runs, half staggers down to the other end of the carriage, before realising she has left her bag on the seat. When she turns to retrace her steps her eyes are wide with panic. The train has stopped at the station and the doors open. In the melee I lose sight of her. She has either spilled out onto the platform amongst the crowd or she has changed carriages. I turn to ask psychology girl and her boyfriend if they saw where she went, but their seats are empty. The doors close and the train moves off.

The woman further down the carriage moves seats and comes to sit near me. She asks if I saw where the girl went. She tells me the story of someone she assisted, once, who had passed out on the pavement, under the influence of drugs. She’d offered her the orange juice she’d just bought for lunch. I half-listen. My thoughts are with the girl. I am re-running the sequence of events through my mind. I am cursing for not having the presence of mind to answer her phone. To tell the person on the other end what train we are on. To ask which stop she was to get off. I’m re-visioning the whole thing, as if my getting it right in my mind will help her to get home. The woman, as if reading my thoughts, says if we had tried to answer her phone the girl would have accused us of trying to steal it.

I think of the unfairness of life; of the girl’s beautifully manicured nails; her dark eyes; what cocktail of drugs she has had; try to guess her age – maybe nineteen or twenty? I say a silent prayer that someone will help her to get home.

When the train pulls into my station I say goodbye to the woman. I have the thought that in another life we could have been friends.

In another life either one of us could have been the girl.