Blowin' in the Wind

The thousand mile eye test....

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?

I've been on a road trip.  1,175 miles to be exact.

I've been testing my eyes......

I've been shaking the limbs, seeing old friends, feeling the world.

It's been a weary long time.  With the exception of one night in Oxfordshire some weeks ago, Amanda has not slept away from the house since last December, and we just needed to see a different horizon....

We were in Norfolk, where we watched birds at dusk....

Marvelling at the  shapes against the sky, whether pairs of silhouetted cormorants......

Or tangles of Knots in their thousands as the tide pushes them shorewards.....

These waders flock in murmurations like starlings as the waters rise.....

Chasing their leaders across the mud flats.....

These are sights to make a virus smile.....

Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?

The next day, we eat prawns, and crab sandwiches, and drink beer, on the beach at Wells-next-the-Sea.  It's almost like being on holiday.....

Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?

And then we head north.  

At Mount Grace Priory I am reminded that there was a time when the government could make catastrophic decisions whose effects would last for centuries.....

Not far away, a sign reminds me of James Cook.  Some people's greatness is someone else's ruin......

And then we strike on up the coast road north.  Sky and sea and land melding in the distance.  It is so good to have a view, to see somewhere else.  Cooped up like frightened creatures, threatened with terrifying consequences, deprived of light and life, we have survived.  But life should be more than survival.....  The road is to be travelled.

At North Berwick, I gaze out to the Bass Rock, just loving to see something else.  

Yes, 'n' how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?

We reach our apex at Loch Leven, where the light is dull and the birds low key.   But there's a distant beauty about the open view, the gleam of silver in the sky and the muted greens and browns of the land.  Just so different from the 'home' counties.  There's a stillness, a quietness, that is hard to find in the south.....

Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?

Then we begin the long slide back down the map.  We break the first day's journey at Cragside, where time stopped ages ago, the inventor of artillery now at peace....

And where, for me, a skinny shadow of my young self still walks in evening mists on the haughs by the Coquet at Thropton, under the Simonsides, wishing for love.....

Then we pause a while at York, whose defensive stones still draw the pilgrims,

And whose glorious Minster is sadly closed to those, who like us, didn't make it quite on time.....  Or who, somehow, don't qualify.....

Then we find ourselves back 'home.'  Though that word seems to mean less these days.  The rain falls, washing moss from the roof, and rinsing the cobwebs from my confused braincells.

A new day dawns, and we walk in quiet lanes, sunlight dappling the fresh green leaves.  And we disappear again into our impoverished routines, flicking from one press conference to another, radio news to tv news, via Prime Minister's Questions to Ministerial statements, wondering whether it will ever end......

Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?

I've been on a road trip.  1,175 miles to be exact.

I've been testing my eyes......

I've been shaking the limbs, seeing old friends, feeling the world.

And I still don't know if I can see.....

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

The answer is blowin' in the wind

 

Bob Dylan

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Over, Under, Down and Out....

I had reasons to visit Australia.  My ‘little’ (ie younger, taller) brother moved to live in Australia over thirty years ago, and I have always meant to visit him.  More recently, our ‘younger’ (ie little) daughter moved there.  These attractions, coupled with rapidly approaching senility and recently acquired freedom from slavery, motivated us to make plans and go.

And look, they put the flags up for us!

On the way over, during the interminable passage of some 18,000 kms, which does allow time to reflect, I realised I had not really done any homework, and I turned over in my mind what little I knew of the upside-down continent…..

My first encounter must have been on a Mercator map, or a globe.  I suppose I must have heard that Prince Charles did a term at Timbertop in 1966, and that the Queen made an extensive tour in 1970 to celebrate the bicentenary of Lieutenant Cook’s invasion.  I must have learned to recognise kangaroos from an early stage, partly through visits to Whipsnade zoo, and seem to remember there being a stuffed koala in the family at some stage.  Oh, and I remember seeing The Sundowners on a flickery 16mm print at school.  I still remember the bush fires…..

Apart from that, historical and cultural knowledge have I little.  As I struggled to sleep on the ‘plane I played the game of remembering famous Australians (not quite as difficult as famous Belgians….)  The list I finally came up with went like this (the order being a mark of the random nature of my brain):  

Ned Kelly, Peter Carey, Dame Edna Everage,  Joan Sutherland, Steve Irwin, Crocodile Dundee, Patrick White, Thomas Keneally, Cate Blanchett, Germaine Greer, Nellie Melba, Jimmy Little (the most beautiful voice since Nellie Melba), Les Murray, Olivia Newton-John, Rupert Murdoch, Peter Weir, Errol Flynn, Shane Warne, Baz Luhrmann, Kerry Packer, Kylie Minogue, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Michael Hutchence, Mad Max, Rolf Harris, Bill Kerr, Clive James, Jack Davis, Banjo Patterson, Magwitch, Oscar and Lucinda, Slim Dusty, Richie Benaud, Paul Kelly, Julian Assange, Nick Cave, and Heath Ledger.  

Despite the statue in Centennial Park, Charles Dickens was not an Australian.....

I have to admit this took me most of the Indian Subcontinent to come up with, and that in the end I cheated (I didn’t know Baz Luhrmann was Australian) and I deliberately left out Nicole Kidman (her trousers in The Australian disqualified her.)  But what does it tell about Australia?  If I had just listed heroes…..

When I had finished this game, with time on my hands, I thought of anything else I could remember about Australia.  This was what I got: Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Ashes, Walkabout (probably the best film about walking about ever made), And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda (a song I personally murdered several times), Illywhacker (which I bought in 1986 and still haven’t read), The Song Lines, the cockpit voice recorder, the disposable plastic syringe, the dual flush toilet and the surf life-saving reel (OK, I looked those last ones up…..)

And that was about it.  Melbourne is south of Sydney; Cairns is north; then I got muddled about where Adelaide is and gave up.

Oh, I almost forgot;  The Great Barrier Reef!

So, eventually, a tad weary, we arrived in Sydney.  It was sunny and bright, though it was the middle of the night, and, most confusingly, I soon found out that the sun set in the East, rose in the West and was at its zenith to the North.  Some of which may be the result of a misunderstanding, but which in any case led to me losing my bearings more than once…..

My brother and sister-in-law live in Leichhardt, a western suburb of Sydney named after a Prussian explorer who disappeared in remote Queensland in 1848. 

The streets are broad, shaded by Moreton Bay Figs and Eucalypts, raucous at dusk with flocks of Rainbow Lorikeets squabbling about their roosting perches.  It is traditionally an Italian area, and the Bar Italia is busy for breakfasts, and Grappa, Ristorante e Bar needs booking for dinner…..  

Tin roofs and wrought iron decorative work mark out the single storey houses, each adorned with flowering plants and palms in the small front yard. 

The Royal Hotel, at the corner of the street, was built in 1886 at a time when Royalty may have been more popular….  In its cavernous interior local drinkers quaff schooners of Coopers Pale Ale in the Happy Hour, while gamblers shout at a wall full of TV screens and betting forecasts.

Sydney is a rapidly developing city, and in the centre is expanding skywards with alarming haste, causing inevitable traffic chaos at rush hours.  The population in 2015 was said to be nearly 5 million, over half a million more than it was in 2011, when over 1.5 million of its citizens were born overseas.  There are reported to be 250 languages spoken in the city.

It straddles the ria (drowned valley) of Port Jackson which is an exceptional natural harbour, named after Sir George Jackson by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770.  It was a perfect haven for the transports of yesteryear, and still is for the cruisers of today.  Port Jackson (which includes the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers) is 19 kms long and has a perimeter of 317 kms.

But Sydney is also close to the sea, and the stretches of coast from Bondi to Coogee to the south, 

and from Manly north, give it advantages few cities can rival (if you don’t count low tide on the Thames, or Chowpatty Beach in Mumbai – it’s a film set!)

The Rocks area, between Circular Quay and the Harbour Bridge, is where the earliest settlers built their homes, and the diminutive Susannah Place Museum commemorates this well (though the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel or the Australian Hotel not far up the road are almost as good!)

Sydneysiders, like little bro’ and family, don’t seem to tire of this metropolis.  Whether it’s Bob Dylan at the Opera House or Prince at the State Theatre (February 21st this year, and the Sydney Morning Herald noted that His singing, too, was sublime. There's something to be said for all that clean living the 57-year-old does these days……  Awww, shucks!)  Whether it’s the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Taronga Zoo or the Royal Botanic Garden; whether you like wandering in the expanse of Centennial Park, or spending time in the Museum of Contemporary Art, it’s a busy, exciting and beautiful place to be….

So much so, that, a little jet-lagged, and overwhelmed by the towering cityscape, it was hard to take it all in, and for a bit I just wanted to sit and watch the world go by.  Which is also quite possible: a jug of prawns and a cool stubby on Shelly Beach, near Manly; a dozen oysters with a glass of chilled Riesling as the sun goes down across Watsons Bay…..  That’s my kind of town!

Back in the tranquillity of Leichhardt, I began to get a feel for the place.  The granite War Memorial in the park told one story; Blak Douglas’s diptych mural What’s Your Point (2015 – Materials: Two cottages and paint) tells another.  

I read on the laminated plaque that this is A poignant snapshot of the his-story of the bold attempts of co-existence between non-Aboriginal peoples and the original occupants of these land we all occupy today. Sadly, it goes on, an oligarchal attitude of those whom honour the ‘founding’ of this great nation ultimately prevents an idealistic coexistence of the two sides. Breadline versus wealth.  Us versus them.  Aptly applied to these two dwellings built during an era when such graphics were more prevalent and stylised in colour to lament neighbourly dispute.  

The British colonial hand points whilst the original occupant’s hand points back.  

The ‘point’ made is one of theoretical illogic.  One side illegally came to occupy the other’s country, introduced a new form of residence, but only one would live the most comfortably and would ultimately determine the material value of their dwellings.

Our visit was too brief.  After thirty years of expectation I didn’t really give it time to do it justice (and bro' was working, bless him – someone has to!) 

So much to learn.  So little time!

And we were bound for Queensland, and the Bruce Highway with our daughter, though first we have the Secret River to explore, and the Blue Mountains….. 

So, those will be the next chapters…..

And then we have to come back, open a stubby and take it easy…..

At the end of 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account, Peter Carey writes that A metropolis is, by definition, inexhaustible, and by the time I departed, thirty days later, Sydney was as unknowable to me as it had been on that clear April morning when I arrived.

Carey is an Australian, and had lived in the city seventeen years before. We spent little over a week in the Sydney.  Small wonder I know so little.....

With very many thanks to Tim, Steph, Daisy, & Max for looking after us so kindly and showing us around.


[Oh, just remembered - Donald Bradman!]